Exhibitions / Group

Unquiet Landscapes

Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield
4 December 2025 – 24 January 2026

Unquiet Landscapes was a group exhibition including Richard Bartle at Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield, presented from December 2025 to January 2026.

Exhibition Text

Unquiet Landscapes was a collaboration between Contemporary British Painting and Yorkshire Artspace, curated by Joanna Whittle. Bringing together thirty-eight artists, the exhibition took Christopher Neve's influential 1990 book Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in Twentieth-Century English Painting as its starting point, opening a dialogue between contemporary painters and earlier generations of artists whose understanding of landscape had been shaped by conflict, memory and change.

Rather than presenting landscape as a place of escape, the exhibition explored it as a site of uncertainty, psychological reflection and material history. Real and imagined landscapes, alongside metaphorical and symbolic responses to place, revealed how contemporary artists continue to negotiate questions of belonging, fragility, loss and renewal through painting.

Writing about the exhibition, Joanna Whittle described it as "an endeavour not only to explore this continuing dialogue between painting and the landscape; how it inhabits us and our reflections of the world in uncertain and wounded times; but also to expand this dialogue between Contemporary British Painting and the wider discourse of painting and other art forms." The exhibition presented landscape as something continually shifting — familiar, yet persistently unquiet.

Participating Artists

Unquiet Landscapes included Susan Absolon, David Ainley, Jonathan Alibone, Iain Andrews, Amanda Ansell, Richard Bartle, Emma Bennett, Simon Carter, Graham Crowley, Angelina May Davis, Al Daw, Natalie Dowse, Thomas D Fowler, Sarah Grant, Heavy Water, Barbara Howey, Linda Ingham, Lisa Ivory, Christopher Jarrett, Anita Lloyd, Paula MacArthur, Nicholas Middleton, Christopher Neve, Paul Newman, David Orme, Mandy Payne, Julian Perry, Georgia Peskett, Chantal Powell, Narbi Price, James Quin, Conor Rogers, George Shaw, Judith Tucker, Simon Tupper, Jan Valick, Joanna Whittle and Sean Williams.

Curated by Joanna Whittle.

Exhibited Artwork

Richard Bartle exhibited Multi Tool (2024), a painting from the Brick & Stone, Iron & Bronze series, developed through the ongoing Unearthed project.

The work depicts a prehistoric flint tool recovered during fieldwalking in Lincolnshire. Rather than presenting the object as an archaeological illustration, the painting examines the material evidence of human presence within the landscape. Through layers of paint, sanding and glazing, Bartle reconstructs the surface of the artefact, allowing its weathered patina and accumulated history to emerge through the painting process.

Selected for Unquiet Landscapes, Multi Tool reflected the exhibition's exploration of landscape as a place shaped by memory, loss and human activity. The work considers landscape not simply as something observed, but as something continually inhabited, altered and remembered through the objects people leave behind.

Installation Views

Selected Artwork

Legacy

Unquiet Landscapes placed Bartle's archaeological painting in conversation with contemporary approaches to landscape, memory and place. Shown alongside artists from Contemporary British Painting, Multi Tool extended ideas developed through the Unearthed project into a wider national discussion about landscape painting.

The exhibition also marked an important return to Sheffield, connecting Bartle's recent archaeological work with Yorkshire Artspace and a wider community of painters working across the UK.

Image Credits

Installation photographs by @willslater53, reproduced with kind permission of Yorkshire Artspace.

Further Reading

For a wider discussion of the exhibition and the work of the participating artists, read Hanna Dhaimish's review of Unquiet Landscapes, published by Corridor8.

Read the review on Corridor8 →