From Artworks to Story – Curating The Land We Carry

When I organised my first solo exhibition, much of my focus was understandably on the practicalities. There were prints to order, frames to assemble, labels to write and countless administrative tasks that seemed to multiply by the day. It was an invaluable learning experience, and one that taught me just how much work happens long before the doors open to visitors.

Planning The Land We Carry has felt rather different.

Of course, there have still been lists to write, measurements to check and logistics to organise. Every exhibition demands those things. But this time, my attention has been drawn less towards simply preparing artwork for display and more towards asking a much bigger question – what story am I trying to tell?

As artists, we often think about individual pieces in isolation. We spend weeks, months, and in some cases, years developing an idea before finally declaring a piece complete and moving on to the next. An exhibition, however, asks something different of us. It asks us to step back and look at our work as a whole.

What conversations are taking place between the artworks?

What themes emerge when they are viewed together?

What journey do we want visitors to experience as they move through the space?

These weren't questions I fully appreciated when planning my earlier exhibitions. This time, they have become central to every decision.

The title, The Land We Carry, arrived quite naturally, but it also challenged me to think more deeply about my own practice. For the last few years, working on personal commissions, I have been able to explore our relationship with landscape – not simply as scenery, but as somewhere layered with memory, history and human experience. Whether I'm creating a view across the Lincolnshire Wolds or re-imagining a familiar landmark from Somerset or Yorkshire, I've realised I'm rarely interested in depicting a place exactly as it appears. Instead, I'm trying to capture how that place feels, and the stories that have unfolded there long before any of us arrived.

The more I reflected on the exhibition, the more I recognised that we all carry landscapes with us.

Some are places we return to often. Others exist only in memory. They might be tied to childhood, family, celebration or loss. They become part of who we are, influencing us in ways we may never fully understand. Even after moving away, those places continue to shape our identity.

That realisation gradually became the thread running through the exhibition.

Rather than arranging artworks simply by size, colour or location, I began thinking about how each piece contributed to the wider narrative. Some celebrate the quiet beauty of familiar places. Others reveal the traces left by generations of people who have shaped the land through farming, industry or settlement. Together, they explore the dialogue between landscape and human experience – one continually influencing the other.

One aspect of the planning process that surprised me was writing the interpretation panels.

I used to write a great deal in my previous work, so I have to admit that I do love to play with words. Yet the process of writing about my work forced me to articulate ideas that had previously existed only as instinct. It encouraged me to examine recurring themes that had quietly appeared across different collections without me consciously intending them.

In many ways, the writing became another stage of the creative process.

It also reminded me that exhibitions are about far more than displaying artwork. They create an opportunity to share the thinking behind the work and to invite visitors into conversations that continue long after they leave the gallery. A carefully considered interpretation panel can encourage someone to pause a little longer, notice a detail they may otherwise have overlooked or reflect on their own experiences of place.

As the exhibition has taken shape, I've also found myself thinking more carefully about the visitor's experience. Where does someone naturally pause? Which artworks deserve space to breathe? Which pieces create moments of energy, and which invite quieter reflection?

Curating isn't simply about filling wall space. It's about creating rhythm.

I suspect most visitors will spend less time considering these decisions than I have. That's exactly as it should be. If the exhibition feels natural to walk through, then the planning has done its job.

Preparing The Land We Carry has reminded me that every exhibition becomes a snapshot of an artist at a particular point in their creative journey. Looking back over the selected pieces, I can see connections that weren't obvious when they were created. I can trace my growing fascination with the visible and invisible marks we leave upon the landscape and recognise how moving to rural Lincolnshire has influenced the way I see place, space and belonging.

Perhaps that's one of the greatest gifts an exhibition offers an artist. It creates an opportunity not only for others to understand your work, but for you to understand it a little better yourself.

I hope visitors enjoy the colours, compositions and familiar landmarks they encounter throughout The Land We Carry. More than that, though, I hope they leave thinking about the places that have shaped their own lives. The landscapes we carry are rarely just geographical. They are emotional, historical and deeply personal, stitched into our memories in ways that are often invisible until we stop to reflect.

If this exhibition encourages even a handful of people to see the places they know with fresh eyes, then it will have achieved exactly what I hoped.

The exhibition is running from 7^th August to 8^th September at the Caistor Arts & Heritage Centre on the edge of the rolling Lincolnshire Wolds.