London, Lefevre Gallery, Recent Paintings by Tristram Hillier, September-October 1980 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 7);
Woking, The Lightbox, The Ingram Collection: Skyscapes, 10 May – 22 June 2014;
Somerset, Hestercombe Gallery, A Personal Passion, 25 April – 5 July 2015;
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
Kendal, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Land | Sea | Life: A British Art Collection, 20 October 2017 – 17 February 2018;
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020
Tristram Hillier was a member of Paul Nash’s Unit One Group, which brought him into contact with the English Surrealists. His pictures, influenced by the Flemish and Italian masters, are executed with a meticulous finish and bear witness to Hillier’s experiences whilst travelling. Painted with an illusionistic style and uncanny accuracy, two trees appear in the foreground next to a winding country road. The mysterious red jumper discarded on the grass next to a shovel imparts a sense of strangeness to this country scene. In this work the artist revisits the desolate landscapes he painted in the late 1960s (Sedge Moor, 1965 and Landscape with Fallen Tree, 1968).
