Unearthing: Memory, Land, Materiality 

15 June – 3 Sept 2023
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries – Gallery 1

Curated by The Courtauld’s MA Curating the Art Museum students, this exhibition explores complex relationships between land, its materiality and memory in modern and contemporary artistic practice.

The display presents eleven works from The Courtauld’s post-1945 collection and the recent acquisitions of the Arts Council Collection. This is the first time many of these artworks have been exhibited and the exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs.

The artists in this exhibition interrogate both the materiality of the earth and their chosen media to explore land and its connection to personal and collective memory.  For these artists, land is much more than a ‘-scape.’ It is a material, an active and contested site, a vessel for memory. It is where people write their histories, but also a force which shapes them.

Displayed in dialogue with The Courtauld’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscapes, the artists in this exhibition present new ways of making art about land which reflects our ever-changing relationship with the earth.

Unearthing: Memory, Land, Materiality is an opportunity to see exceptional but usually unseen works from The Courtauld’s collection displayed alongside artworks by some of the most innovative contemporary practitioners in the UK, including Prunella Clough, Phoebe Collings-James, Katie Cuddon, Jasleen Kaur, Richard Long, Liv Preston, Abigail Reynolds, Richard Serra, Libita Sibungu, and Theo Simpson.

Included with Gallery Entry.