The Power Of The Sea

Turner, Constable and Lanyon at the RWA - The Power of the Sea showcases work by internationally-renowned contemporary artists alongside key historical works from national and regional art collections in a celebration of the sea.

From the sublime spectacle of crashing waves to the vast and open expanse of the oceans, the sea has long fascinated artists in Britain. The Power of the Sea is a major new art exhibition on show at Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy, offering a multi-disciplinary approach to this fascinating subject. The show features paintings by renowned artists from Turner and Constable to Piper and Lanyon, amongst an impressive range of British artists from the eighteenth century through to the present day.

Included in this important survey of coastal art are a host of leading living artists working in a variety of media, including Royal Academicians Norman Ackroyd and Hughie O’Donoghue; contemporary artist Maggi Hambling; camera-less photographer Susan Derges; Royal West of England Academicians Kurt Jackson, Michael Porter and Sax Impey, all working on the Cornish coast, and environmental artist Jethro Brice whose constructions of coastal settlements show life after the cataclysmic events of the 21st century.

The Power of the Sea surveys the changing attitudes to our shores and coastlines, with some of the exhibition’s earliest works – by artists such as George Morland, Francis Danby, John Brett and Walter Langley – emphasising the human costs of shipwrecks and their aftermath. Meanwhile JMW Turner and John Constable were captivated by its elemental nature – its fury and fluidity, breeze and light.

By the late nineteenth century, the sea seemed more benign, a source of leisure and health: Henry Moore, David James and Sydney Mortimer Laurence experimented with different ways of capturing the movement of the waves. In the twentieth century Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth and Paul Feiler found reassurance in the simple geometry of sea walls and boats, while Peter Lanyon, John Piper and Joan Eardley portrayed the coast as much more insubstantial, a place of swirling winds and shifting moods, reflecting personal experience.

Moving into the twenty first century, The Power of the Sea explores contemporary artists’ interest in maritime environments as both minimalist panoramas and places of familiarity and intimacy. Gail Harvey celebrates colourful waves, while Kurt Jackson, Len Tabner and Janette Kerr depict seas that furiously foam and froth. The monochromatic photographs and etchings of James Beale, Norman Ackroyd and Thomas Joshua Cooper capture the moods, beauty and momentary movements of the ocean. History, memory, myth and maritime tradition inhabit the works of Hugh O'Donoghue and Will Maclean. Maggi Hambling, recognised for her celebrated series of North Sea Paintings, has depicted the power and energy of the sea in both paint and bronze. Coastal erosion and rising sea levels are portrayed in work by Simon Read, Michael Porter and Jethro Brice, while Peter Matthews and Andrew Friend immerse work in the sea or create devices that allow us to vanish underneath the water’s surface.

This significant exhibition demonstrates the contrasts and continuities in artists’ engagement with the sea over a period that spans more than two centuries. It encompasses a time of great change in man’s relationship with nature - and the understanding of that relationship – bringing us to the present day and the effects of climate change upon rising sea levels, which has only lent greater urgency to their work.