Common Ground(s)

Expanded ways to think about Landscape

Common Ground(s) is a contemporary group exhibition exploring landscape, ecology and place through interdisciplinary artistic practice. Developed in collaboration with Empty_Space Gallery in Holme, the exhibition will bring together artists working across sculpture, textiles, photography, drawing, sound and environmentally responsive processes. Participating artists include practitioners whose work engages directly with local ecologies, natural materials and environmental processes.The exhibition seeks to create meaningful connections between audiences, artists and the natural world by presenting landscape not simply as scenery, but as something lived, embodied and interconnected with questions of sustainability and care. Several artists involved work directly with materials gathered from their immediate environments, including natural pigments, found objects and plant dyes, encouraging reflection on sustainable making and our relationship to local ecosystems.Alongside the exhibition, the project will include a public programme of artist talks, informal discussion events and opportunities for audiences to engage directly with the ideas behind the work. The project aims to foster cultural engagement within Kirklees while contributing to wider conversations around ecology, climate awareness and the role of creativity in imagining more sustainable futures.

Participating Artists

Becki Zaffino – Artist and Curator

Becki is a contemporary landscape artist based in Huddersfield, whose work explores ecology, memory, place and embodied experience within the landscape. Working across painting, drawing and research-led practice, their work investigates relationships between environment and emotional connection to place. Alongside developing their own artistic practice, they are currently curating Common Ground(s) as part of an ongoing exploration into collaborative and artist-led models of exhibition-making.

Website/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckizaffino_art/

Empty_Space Gallery Team – Venue Partner

Empty_Space Gallery is an independent arts space based in Holme on the edge of the Peak District National Park. The gallery supports emerging and experimental contemporary art practices and provides opportunities for artists working outside traditional institutional frameworks. The gallery team will support installation, exhibition management, promotion and public engagement.

Website: https://www.empty.co.uk

Participating Artists

The exhibition will feature a number of nationally recognised and emerging artists working across ecological, place-based and environmentally responsive practices.

Steve Dilworth – Sculptor

Steve Dilworth is a highly respected sculptor based on the Isle of Harris whose work explores the relationship between landscape, ritual and materiality. His practice often incorporates materials gathered directly from the environment, reflecting deep connections between ecology, time and place. Steve’s work is world renowned and highly acclaimed.

Website: https://www.pangolinlondon.com/artists/34-steve-dilworth/works/

Alice Fox

Alice Fox is a West Yorkshire artist whose practice explores the relationship between traditional crafts, place and ecology. Working with found natural materials, plant matter and weathered surfaces, her work reflects slow processes of observation, collection and transformation. Through delicate and environmentally responsive methods, Fox creates woven and formed works that reveal traces of place, memory and the interconnectedness of human and non-human environments

Website: https://alicefox.co.uk/

Marco Zaffino – Artist

Marco Zaffino is based in Kirklees and creates works using pigments collected from specific locations, presenting them through archival and research-based methods. His practice examines material histories, environmental specificity and the relationship between site and artistic process.

Website: https://www.marcozaffino.com/

Elli Beaven / Whole Cloth Studio – Textile Artist

Elli Beaven is a textile artist and quilt maker whose work uses natural dyes gathered from her local environment. Her practice centres around sustainable making, slow processes and an intimate engagement with landscape and ecology.

Website: https://www.wholecloth.co.uk

Chris Ruffoni

Chris Ruffoni is a multidisciplinary artist from Marsden, whose practice explores landscape, walking, ecology and human relationships with place. Working with sound sculpture, installation and site-responsive processes, Ruffoni’s practice investigates ecology, embodiment and contemporary relationships to the natural world.

Website: https://chrisruffoni.co.uk/

Gillian Cooper

Gillian Cooper’s practice centres on close observation of the natural world. Working primarily through drawing, her work combines delicacy and precision with a deep attentiveness to material detail and ecological presence, encouraging slower ways of looking and a heightened awareness of the interconnectedness between humans and the more-than-human world.

Website: http://www.gilliancooper.art/