Goodwood Art Foundation enjoys excellent opening weeks

SussexWorld

The Goodwood Art Foundation – a new venture placing the best in contemporary art in the most stunning of natural settings – has enjoyed the best possible start in its first weeks since opening.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Really lovely

00:06to speak to Anne Gallagher this afternoon. Now, Anne, you are the consultant curator

00:10at the New Goodwood Art Foundation. It's such an exciting project, isn't it? But the great

00:15thing is, it's made a good start. Been open a few weeks now. What have you learned in

00:20these open weeks, would you say?

00:23Well, I think what we hoped was that audiences would appreciate both the wonderful landscape

00:29and the wide variety of contemporary art that they can experience within it. And the first

00:36impressions we're getting is that that's really working and people are having a very good

00:40time and, yeah, learning about the artists that we're showing.

00:45And that must be very gratifying because this has been a long time in preparation. You've

00:50been involved for three years, haven't you? That's quite something.

00:53Yeah, it obviously took a long time to plan the format, to do research on what the foundation

01:01could be, what we felt audiences would most appreciate. And really, because the artists

01:09were experiencing on their first visit a landscape that hadn't yet changed, it took some time before

01:15we could work together with the landscape designers and we, as the curatorial team, to plan both

01:22the landscape and the art together. And it's very gratifying to have been able to, yeah, be

01:28adventurous, to have climate controlled galleries now to show work inside that couldn't be shown

01:36in the landscape, but also in the landscape to be adventurous about showing not just sculpture

01:41and installation, which obviously work extremely well in that sort of format, but also a sound

01:47work by Susan Phillips and Formants would be an ongoing part of the programme.

01:53As you say, changing landscape, that's part of the challenge and part of the excitement,

01:57isn't it?

01:58Yes, the landscape is actually designed to change every two weeks. I think Dan Pearson's...

02:04That's quite frequent for landscapers.

02:06But his idea was that you had 24 seasons that, yeah, different plantings would emerge at different

02:16times of the year. You know, I've learned quite a lot about horticulture in the process,

02:22that there are trees that blossom in the spring and then again in the autumn and different

02:27colours appear. And that's been really interesting to know about all this while you're planning

02:32the artworks that might appear next to them.

02:35And that is exciting, isn't it? You can come for two entirely different reasons. It's

02:39absolutely legitimate to come purely to enjoy the landscape or purely to enjoy the art, but

02:44ideally both in combination.

02:49Brilliant. Well, really lovely to speak to you. Let's chat more as it grows and congratulations

02:55on all the success so far. Thank you.

02:58Thank you so much.

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