Inspiring Arts and Community in a Natural Setting.
Sculpture Trail 2021
We are committed to encouraging public interaction with contemporary art in a rural setting as well as creating space and opportunity for artists to experiment, show and sell their work to a diverse audience. 68 Artists have been selected to take part in the 2021 Raveningham Sculpture Trail and we will all be very busy preparing artworks for the Trail which will be open July 31st – Sept 5th. Online booking for visitors will open from early July and we will keep in place all of the social distancing and other safety measures we developed in 2020 to ensure that visitors and artists can enjoy the trail in a relaxed way.
As our personal and collective creative journeys have been thrown off course or changed tack wildly this year we are continuing our Creative Odyssey at Raveningham by thinking particularly about the importance and instinctive drive to create a safe place, shelter, home, nest, space, spiritual or natural haven. Artist’s will also be responding to the magical natural site at Raveningham thinking about the flora/fauna which have lifted our spirits celebrating everything from the tiny Fungi in the woods to the beautiful Red Kites and Marsh Harriers above. Artworks will be in the form of sculpture, site specific works, stories, magic, sound, light, film and more for the meadows, pond, gardens, and woodland at Raveningham. We have an exciting opportunity here to push the boundaries of the exhibition forward towards the light at a time when ecological and political events in the world can feel quite dark. By letting our imaginations and aspirations soar we hope to create a sculpture trail that inspires visitors and creates the opportunity for artists to experiment and create. We are committed to encouraging public interaction with contemporary art in a rural setting as well as creating space and opportunity for artists to experiment, show and sell their work to a diverse audience.
Meet the 2021 Raveningham Sculpture Trail Artists…
Grace Adam – www.graceadam.com – Grow Kits I will be gathering wildflower seeds and nuts, things people can grow in their gardens or window boxes. I want to engage people with growing and the local natural environment. Kits will include seeds etc, instructions, fables and tales and a small magnifying glass with drawings of flora and fauna to spot on the trail.
Meg Amsden – www.meg-amsden.co.uk – Continuing her theme of bird-people, Meg will be creating different kinds of nests for them from found natural materials and placing them in the trees and on the ground. Birds can’t learn to fly without a safe place to leap off from. Shelter implies a place of safety but could also be a trap.
Nicola Anthony – www.nicolaanthony.co.uk – Murmuration of Incantions. Murmuration of starlings with words for wings: Phrases come from olde English spells, which took on new meaning this year – echoing the mantras, slogans and incantations voiced throughout the pandemic. Nicola’s sculptures contain historical texts, memories and narratives. A member and trustee of the Royal Society of Sculptors, she works internationally to tell stories which are often left unspoken.
Nick Ball – Nick Ball – VHS SHED – Nick’s process always involves working with recycled materials and responding to a brief. This year for the Sculpture Trail Nick plans to install an ambitious shed using old VHS tapes, creating a shelter with environmental awareness of our throwaway approach to materials.
John Bardell – John Bardell – New sculptural works combining stained glass and stone. The artist is experimenting and developing his process as he combines the two materials.
James Barrett Nobbs – www.acornforge.wixsite.com – Responding to the natural space of the pond and it’s plants and wildlife James is creating a dragonfly for the Sculpture Trail this year.
Stacey Beaumont – www.staceybeaumont.com – This collection will comprise four works celebrating nature’s rhythms as elemental touchstones during periods of extreme flux, such as the Covid pandemic. The natural cycles of day to night, the tide’s ebb and flow and the progression of the seasons remained dependable and life-affirming against the backdrop of worldwide fear and uncertainty. The inspiration for my work comes from the natural environment – in its rhythms I find peace and never more so than during the last year.
Esther Boehm – estherboehm.com – Using initial ideas of a treehouse in the woods Esther has developed a series of paper skins, reminiscent of alabaster or ice, which span and fill gaps between branches creating an enclosure reminiscent of a cocoon moving up through the tree.
Helen Breach – www.helenbreach.com – Shelter……Of A Mother’s Arms. The best shelter and protection is in the loving arms of a mother. An unconditional haven.
Ruth Brumby – www.ruthbrumby.com – In response to the theme of safe places and havens in difficult times, Ruth is considering the support that we give to one another by making a group of life size figures whose balance is maintained by their mutual support. Responding to the Raveningham space these works are intended to show that with support and connection we can still be joyful and brave.
Sarah Cannell – www.sarahcannell.com – Woodland Nocture is a new series of photographs created by Painter and Trail Curator Sarah Cannell. Created in early 2021 the photographs combine the magic of twilight with intense lighting to create images which transport our imaginations to recognisable but unworldly spaces, exploring notions of home, warmth and safety.
Mike Challis – www.mikechallis.com – Over the last 6 years Mike has made a series of SoundHides, spaces to listen to a habitat through the seasons and times of day. For this trail he hopes to harness sounds recorded from a Suffolk Heath to create a magical aural experience passing through a tunnel of nature.
June Croll – www.junecroll.com – Cocoon and Freedom, a 2-part textile piece, one small indoors woven nest or cocoon, and an outdoor site-specific piece: a larger contrasting woven textile journey meandering through nature towards the light. The work is inspired by the complex emotions resulting from the strange life we have all been leading during the pandemic, it reflects the opposing emotions of staying safe inside and the uplifting sense of the natural world around us continuing as normal.
Lorrain Crowe and Dawny Christien
Mark Croxford – www.markcroxford.com – Mark’s sculptures refer to the texture and vitality of the urban landscape. Mark’s wall based constructions hint at the inner city but don’t recall a specific place or time, more a displaced memory that evokes a sense of past and habitation. His use of two and a half dimensions allows his work to straddle preconceived norms and engages his sculptures in physical space while still pointing to the metaphysical.
Leigh Dyer – This piece has been commissioned by Emmaus, a charity that offers a home, work and personal support to a community of formerly homeless people. It has been created by Hastings based sculptor Leigh Dyer and is being seen for the first time at this year’s Raveningham Sculpture Trail before being installed permanently at the Emmaus site 7 miles west of Raveningham in Ditchingham.
Sara Edwards – Safe as Houses? Fairytale homes under attack from the invasive enemy or danger lurks when entering another’s home. The stories are set in stone, the characters one-dimensional. Each fairytale set £65.
Joella Gardner – Borrowed From Nature – Process-led practice is based on a personal engagement with nature and sustainability. Fascinated by the details and processes of the organic, her work celebrates and carries an essence of what she experiences in the natural world. Through the careful balance between material and construction, her work explores ideas of change and impermanence, embracing unpredictability and serendipity through experimental process. Her precarious sculptural installations aim to bring a he
Vivienne Gibbon – An invitation to step/ crawl inside a sculpture and give people an opportunity to step from their experience of the world into the view the sculpture could offer; giving them a new perspective, or offer a moment away from where they are to take sanctuary , quench curiosity in the hope it may awaken a sense of mystery or adventure.
Ian Gill – www.iangillsculpture.com – Ian Gill AWCB is an award winning metal sculptor who has been designing and creating contemporary works of art for almost two decades.
Tricia Hall – 2 Sculptures – Mutable Sculpture, a tribute to a faithful pair of mute swans that reside in the roadside dykes near the Acle Straight. Grazing, a collection of abstract slip cast porcelain forms that are, in part, inspired by cattle grazing on Halvergate Marshes.
Micro Kino – 2021 BAFTA award winning animation The Owl and the Pussycat by Mole Hill and Laura Duncalf, 2018 BAFTA shortlisted Quarantine by Astrid Goldsmith, How Mermaids Breed by Joan Ashworth, Light by Stephen Ong, Cherry Tree by Suzie Hanna and Vicki Feaver and the latest animation form Kayla Parker. Half an hour of world class animation in a field in Raveningham!
Paeony Lewis – www.paeony-lewis.com – ‘Today we celebrate the life of…’ Often overlooked, common Norfolk wildflowers are seen in a different way with cameraless alternative photography. The ethereal images on glass headstones remind us that even the ordinary can become rare. POA and commissions undertaken.
Mary Littlefield
Magical Moths – These moths were created over the winter by Georgina Johnson, Jan Hughes, Diana McKenna and Terry Wright – The project was supported by Creative Odyssey CIC as a creative wellbeing project during Lockdown 2021.
Andy Maule – www.andymaule.net – Enigma, a narrative around a mysterious emerging figure, made from ceramic body parts and rusted metal sheet.
Rachael Long, Sarah Cannell, Andy Jarrett – Flaming Marsh Ponies Collaboration
Liz McGowan
Kate Munro
Verity Newman
Paul Pibworth and Mandy Caldon – www.paulpibworth.co.uk – Collaborative sculpture combining metal and ceramics by these two accomplished artists.
Peter Wiltshire – www.stainedglassgardenart.com – Stained Glass comes alive in an outside space by reflecting light as well as projecting colour. This is enhanced by adding the same movement seen in the surrounding flora. These five experimental stained glass, stainless steel and copper sculptures explore different ways this is possible.
