The 2025 Selectors
Alex Langlands
Dr Alex Langlands is Associate Professor of History and Heritage at Swansea University. He was worked extensively in the heritage sector as an archaeologist and his research work has examined the role the landscape has played in social, cultural and economic developments in Britain's distant past. He is a Sunday Times Best Selling author and award-winning broadcaster for BBC, C4 and C5. He has published widely on Wessex and has a longstanding relationship with the archaeology and history of South Wiltshire.
Sam Smiles
Sam Smiles is Honorary Professor, University of Exeter. He is an art historian whose research and publications are focused on British landscape painting, from its origins to 20c modernism and beyond. He has also developed a long-standing interest in the responses of artists to the prehistoric legacy of these islands, curating the exhibition British Art: Ancient Landscapes at the Salisbury Museum in 2017.
Akash Bhatt
Akash Bhatt was born in Leicester and studied at Loughborough College of Art, the University of Westminster and St Martin's School of Art.He has exhibited widely in many group exhibitions including The BP Portrait Award, The Sunday Times Watercolour exhibition and the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. He says of his practice, 'My interest lies in people and their habitats. I have often travelled extensively researching for new projects; however I am equally comfortable gathering inspiration from in and around where I live.'
Louise Balaam
I am a painter of expressive, gestural landscapes, which communicate an intense emotional response to the experience of being in the landscape.
For me, light is a crucial aspect of the emotional impact of my painting. I am hugely influenced by the English landscape tradition, particularly Constable and Turner. Other important influences include Joan Eardley and Peter Lanyon, as well as American abstract expressionist artists Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell. I live and work in Kent, UK.
I am a member of the New English Art Club and of the Royal West of England Academy, and have a degree and a Masters qualification in Fine Art. I have work in many private collections and have shown in the Royal Academy Summer Show, the Threadneedle Prize, the Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize, and the Discerning Eye.
Adrian Green
Adrian Green is the director of The Salisbury Museum. He studied Archaeology at University College London and has an MA in Museum Studies from Leicester University. At Salisbury he has been responsible for transforming the permanent galleries and launching a temporary exhibition programme centred on 19th and 20th century art linked to the Salisbury area. This has included exhibitions about John Constable, JMW Turner, Augustus John, John Craxton and Rex Whistler.