WASTELAND

Wasteland is the outcome of a year-long project initiated by Sharon Wylde in collaboration with Lorna Ough, curator at Blackshed Gallery.

This exhibition represents the culmination of the project and features the sculptures and photographs of seven artists who explore themes of place, materiality and time in playful and engaging ways. In celebration of found, repurposed, and organic materials, these artists have created a trove of arresting and eclectic objects which will be exhibited inside the gallery and in the nearby woods and pond area.
 

Wasteland highlights nature’s gradual reclaiming of this marginal landscape around the gallery, showing how the natural world slowly interacts and collaborates with human activity. The works exhibited here are created with all kinds of matter and stuff, the artists all possessing a shared interest in the quiet power of materials. The form of the exhibition takes inspiration from the makeshift collections of artworks and found objects common to surrealists and historical cabinets of curiosities, where the boundaries between art, artifact and environment are deliberately blurred.
 

The exhibition includes works by Alice Freeman, Beccy McCray, David Kefford, Liz Elton, Rowan Corkill, Sarah Pager, and Sharon Wylde. Additionally, an outdoor photo gallery features images taken by students from St Mary’s School, Heathfield. Their photographs, captured while wandering through the woods, offer a fresh, instinctive perspective on nature and the experience of observing it.

Curator Lorna Ough says:
"This project is about attention—what we notice, what we discard, what we come back to. It’s about giving space to the slow work of nature and the thoughtful responses of artists and young people alike."