Europe After The Rain

The international group exhibition, curated by Simon Faithfull, borrows its title from Max Ernst’s painting Europe After The Rain II. Taking its lead from this work, the exhibition presents visions of dystopian terrains and possible landscapes to come.

Ernst’s painting from 1942 depicts a haunting future landscape where things seem to have evolved, or possibly devolved, into a new strange state. For the exhibition in Newlyn, Ernst’s small surreal painting is reproduced as a 7m wallpaper-print that provides both a backdrop and a starting point for a show that imagines a world in transition after things have changed. Within these artworks, the current tensions between humans or landscapes are amplified to create an unnerving alien terrain. Although many of the artworks do create a sense foreboding, they also present visions of renewal and growth within an emerging world. While some of the works consider normal things from our everyday world (such as caravans or ski-slopes), when framed within the wider context of the exhibition these works become artefacts within a collective dream – a dream of an imagined landscape to come.

See Read More below for list of artists and works or see Europe After The Rain

Europe After The Rain runs parallel to Fathom, a solo show of film and photography by Simon Faithfull at The Exchange, exploring where land meets sea and man’s place in it. Showing on Penzance promenade is Liverpool to Liverpool, accounts of daily life on the ocean, presented on 14 metal signs.

ARTISTS AND WORKS:

Larry Achiampong’s (1984, UK) Relic 1 (2017) is a film that looks back at an English landscape and culture as seen from a distant post-colonial future.

Peggy Atherton’s (1969, UK) work is haunted by a sense of loss and absent presence. Atherton collects ‘road kill’ which she then slip-casts and fires to 900C to create ceramic shells that encapsulate spaces where an animal used to be.

Karin Bos’ (1966, Netherlands) paintings of caravans and fires that have a survivalist mood, hunkered down in a desolate landscape.

Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson’s (1968, UK &1965, UK) Bunting repurposes emergency foil blankets to create golden, reflective bunting – perhaps a marking of celebration or maybe of warning.

Simon Faithfull (1966, UK) Presented in the reception is a short video work made in an abandoned whaling station on a sub-Antarctic island.

Anne Hardy’s (1970, UK) art practice is in photography and sculptural installation, often presenting abandoned but ambiguous environments.

Tim Knowles’ (1969, UK) Nightwalk photographs present a light-trail drawn by the artist as he walks through an empty nighttime landscape.

Nick Laessing’s (1973, UK) work engages with the idea of the ‘Anthropocene’ (the landscape as created and dominated by humans). Laessing’s sculptural-machines offer solutions for surviving in sustainable ways – plants growing in simulated zero-G and cooking using the power of sunlight.

Onya McCausland’s (1971, UK) monochrome wall-painting has been made from raw earth pigments that were accidently created by the runoff from an abandoned and disused Cornish mine.

Melanie Manchot (1966, Germany). Showing, in the lower gallery, Out of Bound (2016) is a double projection installation that presents two scenes from the high Alps. Although actually depicting normal ski-slope maintenance – the sublime and otherworldly vision could equally suggest a kind of ‘terra-forming’ activity in an alien landscape.

Rebecca Partridge (1976, UK) is a painter whose work often engages with the idea of the romantic landscape. Partridge’s two works: Desert Night and Desert Day (2016) present a vision an ‘empty’ landscape turning in space.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (1973, Canada). The sound of an air-raid siren reveals itself to the voice of a boy soprano – perhaps a plaintive call from the future.