Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud
York City Art Gallery & Abbott Hall, Lakeland Arts, Kendal
29 March 2019 – 5 October 2019
To commemorate the 200th birthday of John Ruskin, the exhibition ‘Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud: Watercolours and Drawings’ examines the reverent critical appreciation Ruskin held for J M W Turner’s landscape paintings and their shared love for the natural world. In bringing together the works of Turner, Ruskin, their contemporaries including Constable, and contemporary artist Emma Stibbon, the exhibition recontextualises the ever-essential question of our relationship to, and our impacts on, our environment. This was a chief concern of Ruskin’s, who observed and documented glaciers and skyscapes and saw in them the impacts of industrialisation.
Emma Stibbon RA, commissioned to respond to Ruskin’s concerns from a contemporary viewpoint, retraced his steps and travelled to Chamonix and drew and photographed the glaciers around Mont Blanc. These observations of the landscapes loved by Ruskin and Turner manifested in large scale ink drawings that reflect on the effects of climate change. The through line drawn from the works and concerns of the 19th century to those of now highlights the flattening of past and present and the need to look forward and consider our place in the environment and its fragility.