The Holburne Museum in Bath has opened an exhibition titled *Ancient Landscape, Modern Times: Eric Ravilious and the Artists of the Chalk Downs*, showcasing works by early 20th-century artists inspired by Britain’s chalk downs and archaeological heritage. Featuring paintings and prints by Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, William Nicholson, and others, the exhibit explores how these artists reimagined the region’s ancient landscapes through a modern lens.
The exhibition traces a renewed interest in Britain’s past that emerged following key events such as the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. Unlike earlier artists drawn to dramatic natural features, this generation found beauty in the chalk downs’ minimalistic, rolling terrain, which lent itself to an abstract aesthetic. Ravilious’s *Train Landscape* (1940) offers a view through a train carriage toward the iconic Westbury White Horse, emblematic of this approach. His watercolours of the Asheham Cement Works highlight an angular, industrial grace, while Nash’s representations of stone circles blend modernist abstraction with an almost timeless quality.
Among the exhibit’s highlights are Paul Nash’s depictions of standing stones and a crashed German bomber on a beach, where the wreckage assumes a monumental presence akin to ancient megaliths. The show also includes vintage Shell petrol posters inviting motorists to explore the downs, reflecting the era’s burgeoning car culture. These elements contextualize the shifting relationship between modern life and historical landscapes.
The exhibition emphasizes the tension between preservation and progress, as evidenced by details like telegraph poles and barbed wire cutting across the countryside, or a motor car park adjacent to historic stones photographed by Nash. Curators note that this dialogue between nature, history, and modernity enriches the viewer’s experience beyond the gallery, encouraging a fresh perspective on the contemporary landscape.
On view through January 10, the exhibition offers both familiar and lesser-known works that invite visitors to reconsider Britain’s chalk downs not only as historical sites but as dynamic spaces continuously reinterpreted by art.
In London, a new exhibition dedicated to the fashion partnership of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell highlights their collaborative influence during the 1960s and 1970s. Their designs, known for blending bold prints and flowing silhouettes, captured the spirit of Swinging London. The show features key pieces including a 1971 bias-cut dress combining two contrasting floral prints, emblematic of their complementary talents—Clark’s cutting expertise and Birtwell’s pattern design.
The duo’s work challenged conventional fashion norms, embracing mix-and-match prints and broader concepts of gender expression, attracting high-profile wearers such as Mick Jagger. Although their personal and professional relationship ended amidst financial difficulties and Clark’s untimely death in 1996, Birtwell has continued to influence fashion, recently designing prints for a Burberry collection and collaborating with Topshop in 2006. The exhibition runs until April 11.
Meanwhile, in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, composer David Buckley and librettist Stephen Plaice premiered *Oracle*, a 40-minute satirical opera examining artificial intelligence and its potential threats to humanity. Featuring a cast led by tenor Daniel Norman as a tech entrepreneur aiming to commercialize a machine replicating the Delphic oracle’s prophetic powers, the work unfolds through an encounter with two contrasting AI voices—one offering optimistic predictions, the other foretelling human destruction.
Despite the entrepreneur’s desire to harness the hopeful AI for profit, the darker machine ultimately assumes control, culminating in an apocalyptic finale underscored by a booming voice of Apollo, voiced by Stephen Fry. The music is noted for its film-score sophistication and intense, brooding atmosphere, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra under Jérôme Kuhn’s direction with minimalist staging that enhances the dramatic tension. The performance is scheduled to air on Radio 3 on October 22 and will be available on BBC Sounds thereafter.