No more nostalgia as British countryside has new appeal for artists
Charlotte Higgins explores a renewed relationship between British artists and the countryside as big names opt out of the urban sprawl.
Bedwyr Williams is gazing out of the window when we speak on the phone, out through his Caernarfonshire garden towards the south-west tip of Anglesey. "I can do one thing or the other," says the artist, who represented Wales at this year's Venice Biennale. "I can negotiate having a social life living in a city, or I can be an artist. I found I can't do both … Britain has become so complex to be poor in. At least if I am skint here, I can look at the mountains."
In the 1990s and on into the early years of this century, it was a given that most of the artistic expression in Britain – or, at least, the type of artistic expression that was fashionable, institutionally recognised and socially concerned – was likely to have its roots in urban life. The city – its architecture, its rough-hewn textures, its harsh yet exhilarating stories of people divided by race and class – was the stuff of plays, art and pop. The inner city, shaking off the urban blight of the 1980s, was cool, nowhere more so than Shoreditch in east London, which became the de facto centre of the UK art world.
Bedwyr Williams is gazing out of the window when we speak on the phone, out through his Caernarfonshire garden towards the south-west tip of Anglesey. "I can do one thing or the other," says the artist, who represented Wales at this year's Venice Biennale. "I can negotiate having a social life living in a city, or I can be an artist. I found I can't do both … Britain has become so complex to be poor in. At least if I am skint here, I can look at the mountains."
In the 1990s and on into the early years of this century, it was a given that most of the artistic expression in Britain – or, at least, the type of artistic expression that was fashionable, institutionally recognised and socially concerned – was likely to have its roots in urban life. The city – its architecture, its rough-hewn textures, its harsh yet exhilarating stories of people divided by race and class – was the stuff of plays, art and pop. The inner city, shaking off the urban blight of the 1980s, was cool, nowhere more so than Shoreditch in east London, which became the de facto centre of the UK art world.