Conversations with Ancient Landscapes

Conversation with Ancient landscapes May 28th – June 28th 2026

Curated by Nick Davies

Turner House Gallery, Penarth

Kate Bell, Nia Bennett, Ellie Brown, Matt Cook, Yas Crawford, Nick Davies, Maryanne Hawes,
Verity Howard, Sasha Kingston, Sarah Persson, Philippine Sowerby, Paul Wearing

Conversations with Ancient Landscapes’ involves a collaboration between Welsh and Cornish artists who are responding to ancient landscapes/civilisations; exploring themes of geology and psychogeography, mytho-historical narratives, tracing connections through astrology, ancestral marking, ley lines and migration.
The outcomes from visiting sites in Wales and West Cornwall are seemingly less focussed on representation and more so with revealing individual interactions with the surroundings. Combined with scientific and historical interpretations, the exhibition also embodies a metaphysical nature; questioning the perceptible and the subjective nature of liminality, and echoing similar philosophies that
ultimately respond to our human connection with the landscape – Nick Davies

I am very excited to be part of this new exhibition ‘Conversations with Ancient Landscapes’ in May 2026 at The Turner House Gallery, Penarth.

These works are a visual journey through ancient landscapes, both internal and external, exploring the feminine in ancient stones and stone circles, creating a visual archaeology a sense of place embedded through sound, colour and mark making.

The sites in both Cornwall and South Wales I have visited and explored for this exhibition, are steeped in myth and folklore. Boskednan stone Circle which is also known as The Nine Maidens was believed to be a circle of female forms turned into stone for dancing on the sabbath , and Men-an -Tol, Penwith, a Neolithic stone menhir whose circular stone was said to be a portal between the living and the dead, , a symbolic entrance into the next world, and also a place of spiritual healing, fertility rituals and the supernatural. An alignment with an 18.6-year moon cycle echoes the feminine and the power of ley lines and celestial skies – thin place.

Visiting these ancient sacred landscapes, the mystery and language of the stones evoke memories and connection, meeting natural forces in the placing of these strange forms in otherworldly landscapes endowed with incredible surface patterns of golden ochres, pale greens, reds and blue lichen immediately draws attention to the visual and physical sensations of being in a sacred place. The rhythms and sounds encouraging us to contemplate the passage of time and our place in this world.

These are weather worn remnants of a distant past that still manage to retain their secrets. An unquiet landscape of real and imagined geographies, of the human cosmos and astroarchaeology.

They are ‘markers and witnesses for an unknown mythological past” and’ projections of mystical and spiritual significance’.

Itell Colquhoun with her esoteric and surreal views believed that the stone circles and monuments were ‘repositories still of ancient powers and living stones’.