The radical and vital work of Common Ground – the Dorset-based arts and environmental charity – is explored at Yorkshire Sculpture Park through an archive display, an exhibition documenting recent artist residencies and a new open-air commission by artist James Webb.
Founded in 1983 by Sue Clifford, Angela King and the writer Roger Deakin, Common Ground has collaborated widely across the arts to celebrate the relationship between people and place.
In the Garden Gallery, an archival display documents some of Common Ground’s most iconic initiatives over three decades. The New Milestones project in Dorset helped communities commission sculptures for the landscape by artists including Peter Randall-Page, Andy Goldsworthy and John Maine.
Trees, Woods and the Green Man explored the cultural and natural value of trees and is represented through drawings by David Nash made to illustrate the publication In a Nutshell, and diary works from Andy Goldsworthy’s residency on Hampstead Heath in 1986.
The Bothy Gallery concentrates on Common Ground’s work with a new generation of contemporary artists. In 2017, Assemble, Owen Griffiths, Kurt Jackson, Christine Mackey, Alec Finlay and Harriet & Rob Fraser were invited to create a series of works that explore the relationship between trees, woods and communities to mark the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest, in collaboration with the Woodland Trust.
Broadcast from speakers concealed within trees around the Park, Supernature (2018) is a sound work by South African artist James Webb in which the artist tells stories and creates conversations between trees within the YSP landscape.
