A Route of Evanescence
Slide Gallery
Manchester School of Art
April 2025
Exhibiting Artists: Abbie Fowler, Cain Casson, Cass Jones, Daisy Fulton, Esme Ballard, Iona Ford, Rio Darwin
A Route of Evanescence unites artists working across a wide range of disciplines, but who share an interest in expanded landscapes. Their diverse perspectives on the natural world speaks to audiences who similarly have varied relationships with nature. The exhibited work includes performance, ceramics, still and moving image, painting, textiles, sculpture and sound art.
The artists have backgrounds in both Art History and Fine Art and are from all over the UK and Ireland.
The artists' manifold approaches provide glimpses into their personal relationships with the landscape, which, instead of creating distance from the viewer, move towards ubiquity. As the poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote "Parochialism is universal; it deals with the fundamentals". The theme of journeys in the work will also extend to the curation, which will be supported by the exhibition map that will take the form of a fantasy explorer's map. Rather than the map as a means to divide and classify, we will investigate how it can facilitate exploration and adventure. The exhibition title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson, who saw the whole world from her window. For the artists, 'A Route of Evanescence' refers to semantic links between works, walks in the landscape and the psychogeographic wanderings that art catalyses. Dickinson's abstraction holds space for further meanings to unfold through the course of the show and within the conversations that surround it.
Words by Cass Jones