Event Details

LICA’s Gerry Davies has collaborated with Brantwood, home of 19th century polymath John Ruskin, to produce an exhibition of new drawings titled Mr Ruskin, One Day Someone Will Scuba Dive Over Your House.

The drawings re-imagine Ruskin’s house, its rooms, collections of books, paintings and minerals submerged as a consequence of climate change and sea level rise.

Ruskin had a lifelong commitment to drawing to nature and environments and in his 1884 lecture text The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, gave a very early warning of climate change. Looking out over his beloved Coniston Water he saw a ‘plague cloud’ of industrial pollution blighting skies, sunsets and sunrises, some likely to have drifted from Lancaster mills and factories.

Gerry spent time drawing and photographing Brantwood’s main rooms and historic artefacts as well as the cellars, storage rooms, back stairs, staff offices and gardens. Sketches and impressions were then transformed in the studio into a suite of larger drawings which imagine the consequences of climate crisis at this site of cultural significance.

Gerry says, ‘while climate crisis is overwhelmingly serious, I'm trying to touch the topic lightly, with care and concern, but imaginatively and in a way that audiences might engage with’.

The drawings depict ‘speculative futures’, an approach shared by other researchers and creatives at Lancaster University. To accompany the exhibition Gerry has worked with colleagues to produce a publication, a newspaper called The Coniston Aquatic. WriterKaren Lloyd, historian Chris Donaldson and artist Sarah Casey have contributed short pieces to accompany an introduction by Gerry and an essay by Howard Hull, Director of the Brantwood Trust. Gerry says, ‘the idea to make a newspaper rather than a formal catalogue is to reach a wider audience, and making a newspaper is fun, and research must be enjoyable, as well as useful’.

Mr Ruskin, One Day Someone Will Scuba Dive Over Your House. In The Blue Gallery, Brantwood. East of Lake Coniston LA21 8AD. Visit the website for more information.

The exhibition runs from 5 October – 11 November. Open every day 10am-5pm. Entry included in house admission.

See more of Gerry's work here: www.gerrydavies.co.uk