Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art 1768-2017

This suitably summery exhibition celebrates British art’s rich tradition of finding inspiration in the skies above us and the air that we breathe.

Covering four centuries in British art, the exhibition brings some of the nation’s masterpieces to Bristol, including Joseph Wright of Derby’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (pictured), on loan from the National Gallery – believed to be the first time this masterpiece has been exhibited in Bristol.

Other well-loved works include John Everett Millais’ Bubbles – previously known as A Child’s World, before featuring in the famous advertising campaign for Pears soap – and J.M.W. Turner’s The Thames Above Waterloo Bridge, alongside paintings by artists such as Constable, Lowry and Lanyon.

Air features explorations of flight, including depictions of the earliest hot air balloon flights, celebrating the eighteenth century’s ‘balloonmania’, in addition to the sinister shadows and trails left by warplanes and the ominous shape of bulbous barrage balloons in works by Eric Ravilious, Frank Dobson and Christopher Nevinson – including the epic painting The Battlefields of Britain.

Air is also explored as ‘the breath of life’, with a number of works featuring musical instruments such as Dora Carrington’s Spanish Boy, Accordion Player, Elizabeth Forbes’ Allegory of Spring: Pied Piper, and Kate Williams’ hand-blown trombone in borosilicate glass, alongside Neville Gabie’s installation Collective Breath featuring ‘the breath of one thousand, one hundred and eleven people collected together and released to play a single note for 49 minutes.’

The invisible is turned visible by internationally-renowned contemporary artists, including a new work created especially for the exhibition from ‘international man of the clouds’, Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde. Encompassing painting, photography, film, installation and sculpture, living artists include Royal Academicians Ian McKeever and Peter-Randall Page; Hull UK City of Culture 2017 featured artist Mariele Neudecker; and interdisciplinary artist Dryden Goodwin (best known for his 8ft high projection Breathe mounted upon St Thomas Hospital, opposite the Houses of Parliament, in 2012 to highlight the effects of air pollution on our children’s fragile lungs).

Elsewhere, sculptor Mat Chivers’ Outbreath and Alter Outbreath turn breath into a three-dimensional form, whereas Annie Cattrell’s delicate transparent lungs highlight each and every ventricle and airway. Also utilising the ghostly transparency of glass is Bristol’s own Luke Jerram, whose colourless sculpture Avian Flu (H5NI), from his Glass Microbiology series, highlights the dangers of airborne disease.

“Bringing historic loan artworks together in conversation with work from contemporary artists, Air explores our fascination with this most essential element, encompassing art and science, from early scientific experiments to climate change. This fascinating exhibition makes the invisible visible, capturing the air we breathe and the skies above us, to show how air is ‘ever present, ever there’, and perhaps more importantly, in need of our care.”

June 16-Sept 3. Tue-Sat 10am-6pm/Sun 11am-5pm/closed Mondays except Bank Holidays.£6.95/£4.95 concs/under 16s/SGS, UoB & UWE students free.

For more info, visit www.rwa.org.uk/whats-on/air-visualising-invisible-british-art-1768-2017

Pictured: Joseph Wright of Derby, Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768). National Gallery