Visitors to the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro are being given the opportunity to look at the Cornish landscape in very different ways.

From a coffin to a water still and from a unique arrangement of burnt sticks to photos of camouflaged menhirs, The New Landscape exhibition offers a very different way of looking at our surroundings.

All the works on display have been created by contemporary artists who are working in Cornwall. One of them, Rupert White, from Truro, was responsible for curating the exhibition which has just opened.

“This was a collaborative effort to bring artists with similar interests together,’ he said. ‘Photography, video and new media have all been used in a wide variety of ways. Often installations like the ones on display are site-specific. This exhibition has given us the chance to make them accessible to many more people.”

Rupert has three exhibits on display. One of them, entitled ‘Still’, is a sculpture that turns salt water from Truro River into drinking water.

“By using a museum plinth and cover to create a useful object I’m questioning the value we put on art,” he said.

Paul Chaney, from Falmouth, uses a mixed media model of shipping containers amongst trees to consider humanity’s relationship to nature whilst Alison Sharkey, from Chacewater, covered an ancient menhir near Goonhilly in a ‘Dazzle’ camouflage and placed a fake menhir in an adjacent field to explore the theme of unexpected encounters – the playful and the absurd. Whilst she couldn’t re-create what happened at the site, she has photos on display.

“Covering the real menhir and making a dummy one appear caused chaos on a tour bus,” she said.

The exhibition’s centrepiece is a circular arrangement of burnt sticks constructed by Bruce Davis, from St Just. A nearby video shows the fire from which they emerged. “The museum is a strange place for me to show my work because it normally relates to specific places,” he said. “It’s great that a lot more people can see it.”

The New Landscape exhibition will run until March 14. Entrance is free. For more information, visit www.royalcornwallmuseum.org.uk or call 01872 272205.