Unquiet Landscapes 2025-26: Installation images

This publication accompanies Unquiet Landscapes, an exhibition of contemporary painting shown at Yorkshire Artspace (YAS) in Sheffield, from December 2025 to January 2026. Produced in partnership with Contemporary British Painting (CBP), Unquiet Landscapes showcases 38 artists, continuing a series at YAS celebrating contemporary painting in Britain. The exhibition takes as its starting point Christopher Neve's influential book of art writing, Unquiet Landscape (1990), published by Thames & Hudson. For guestcurator, painter and Vice Chair of CBP Joanna Whittle, this has inspired both her selection, and an invitation to the artists. They have generously responded with reflections on their own relationship to painting landscape, and some directly to Neve's text. We hope you enjoy reading their contributions in this catalogue. These in turn set up a dialogue with both the ideas and the 20th century British artists featured in Neve's writing, many of whom had experienced the trauma of war. Seeking solace and connection in the natural world is still tempered by reality, by thoughts of mortality and fragility. As such, the exhibition is seasoned with something like longing or melancholia, and is undoubtedly influenced by the sensibility of Whittle herself, who writes beautifully about these underpinning themes in her catalogue essay. The paintings featured in Unquiet Landscapes are not picturesque or romantic or straightforwardly "pictures" of landscape therefore. Perhaps what unites them is that they refer to place, whether above or below ground, observed, imagined, metaphorical or atmospheric, in ways that capture our feelings and imagination. We would like to thank most sincerely the artists represented here, who have responded with enthusiasm to the idea of the show. We are hugely grateful to the CBP and its Chair Narbi Price, for their partnership, support and for funding the transportation of works. I am very grateful to my colleagues as YAS, with special thanks to Rachael Dodd who has been heavily involved in the staging and production of the exhibition. And finally, we are all indebted to Joanna Whittle for her vision, work ethic, curation, writing and above all, her painting.