This is the first exhibition to celebrate the extraordinary artistic outpourings that volcanic eruptions have triggered over the past five centuries.
The exhibition ranges from early engravings, showing imagined cross-sections of the fiery centre of the earth, to an explosive series of paintings by Joseph Wright, J M W Turner and Andy Warhol. It is a chance to examine the presence of volcanoes as geological phenomena and their power and influence, through an exciting range of historic and recent works of art.
Eye-opening and spectacular, the exhibition traces a route through the sequence of volcanic eruptions - from the calm volcano and first ominous rumblings, to cataclysmic explosion, through panic and death to aftermath, and then quietly back to dormancy and extinction.
James P Graham
Extract from a special two screen corner installation of Iddu to be shown as part of our Volcano exhibition.
Joseph Wright, Vesuvius in Eruption, 1774 © 2010 Derby Museums & Art Gallery / Utagawa Hiroshige, Aratame (1853 – 1857/two-seal period) and A cencor denoting the month of the year. Woodblock prints. 1858 – 1859. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.