Julian’s Bower, Alkborough, North Lincolnshire
Image, Instinct and Imagination: Landscape as Sign Language
A photographer’s guide to Prospect-Refuge Theory
Touring exhibition created with the late Professor Jay Appleton, exploring his theory of landscape appreciation first put forward in The Experience of Landscape (1975)
The Gallery, Bath Central Library
24 June – 25 July 2015 Admission free. Open during library hours
Supported by Landscape Research Group, LUC and Colvin & Moggridge
Geographer Jay Appleton (1919-2015) and photographer Simon Warner join forces to present a photographic guide to Prospect-Refuge Theory, the system of environmental aesthetics developed by Jay Appleton in his book The Experience of Landscape. Professor Appleton proposes that aesthetic taste in landscape and landscape art derives from primitive, hunter-gatherer instincts for vantage and viewpoints (Prospect) and shelter or concealment (Refuge). Humans, as well as other animals, select environments that contain a favourable balance of these two elements. With the advance of civilization our survival instincts have evolved into feelings of pleasure at landscapes (or pictures of them) that would make good habitats if we had to depend on them.
The exhibition opened in 2014 at the Royal Geographical Society and has toured to Dean Clough Galleries Halifax and Edinburgh College of Art.
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