This is a virtual gallery tour by curator Katie Bruce for the opening of Drink in the Beauty at GoMA, 3rd June 2021. While we hope you are able to visit the show in Gallery 3 now that we are open, you see the works from the show and the introduction from the curator.

Drink in the Beauty
Gallery 3
4 June 2021 – 23 January 2022

Drink in the Beauty is the first show to celebrate the GoMA’s 25th anniversary year. The exhibition draws on rare work by Anna Atkins from its renowned collection alongside recent acquisitions – including work by Carol Rhodes and Sara Barker. The exhibition also features artist film works borrowed from Jo Ganter and Jade Montserrat.

The title comes from a quote ‘Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see’, by the eminent conservationist and author Rachel Louise Carson, and underpins the theme of the show – to inspire us to think about our connections to nature within the landscape around us and our responses to global injustices. It is over 50 years since Carson wrote her groundbreaking work Silent Spring on the catastrophic and wide ranging effects of the use of pesticides. This publication is often credited with advancing the global environmental movement and while we are in a time when a pandemic has devastated lives worldwide alongside a climate emergency, this writing is as relevant now as it was then.

Drink in the Beauty explores representations of landscape, geology and human aspirations by artists who have documented and recorded the natural environment. More pressingly it opens up conversations with current debates on climate justice and legacies of the British Empire.

Artists: Anna Atkins, Sara Barker, Jo Ganter, Ilana Halperin, Jade Montserrat with Webb Ellis, Jacki Parry, Carol Rhodes, Kate V Robertson and Amanda Thomson.

Images copyright the artists.