Main content

Tacita Dean, Mountains, John Tyndall

How to see a landscape through the eyes of visual artist Tacita Dean plus what photography did for the mountaineer and what the mountain did for a physicist.

Tacita Dean has travelled the world pursuing her interest in landscape phenomena, capturing them on film and then editing that material to produce her art. In a new exhibition at London's Royal Academy she presents works new and old on everything from cloudscapes to the cosmos.
Dean who trained as a painter talks to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough about the importance of courting the unknown and the mercurial qualities of film image, flares, flaws and all.
Then focus on mountains and those who climb them. New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson reflects on an interplay between climbing and photography and how posing led to new understandings of what happens to the human body as it switches between stillness and movement plus the role mountains played in the intellectual development of the 19th century physicist and poet, John Tyndall with Tyndall's biographer, Roland Jackson and literary scholar Gregory Tate.

Tacita Dean Landscape is at the Royal Academy until August 12th. Last chance to see Tacita Dean: Portrait is at the National Portrait Gallery, 15 March-28 May; Still Life is at the National Gallery, 15 March-28 May

Roland Jackson, Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institution THE ASCENT OF JOHN TYNDALL: Victorian Scientist, Mountaineer and Public Intellectual is out now.
Dr Greg Tate lectures in Victorian Literature at the University of St Andrews and was chosen as a New Generation Thinker in 2013.

Dr Ben Anderson is a 2018 New Generation Thinker from Keele University who is writing a book Modern Natures: Mountain Leisure and Urban Culture in England and Germany, c. 1885-1918.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Available now

45 minutes

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Tacita Dean
Interviewed Guest Eleanor Barraclough
Interviewed Guest Ben Anderson
Interviewed Guest Gregory Tate
Interviewed Guest Roland Jackson
Producer Jacqueline Smith

Broadcast

  • Thu 24 May 2018 22:00

Featured in...

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

You can download all the past episodes of Radio 3's Free Thinking

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival

Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life