Edge Land

Welcome to Edge Land. You've been here before... You recognise this liminal zone, its changing habitats, its fluctuating borders. Edge Land is felt in the nostalgia for a home that is shifting and transforming while you inhabit its fragility. It is the meshing of the natural world with human intervention. It is the unsteady coast, the wandering wood, the brackish marsh, the altered migrations and the changing seasons.

This two-year multidisciplinary arts project, involving artists, writers, poets, photographers, and performers, examines and documents the manmade and natural changes to the landscape of the Suffolk coast and its hinterland. Within the context of their work, 'landscape' includes the geology; biodiversity and ecosystems; physical, historical, social and cultural human world; soundscape; and the sea itself.

The first in a series of exhibitions, this collaboration between the Edge Land project and the Leiston Long Shop Museum will showcase the artwork and writing of over twenty creatives alongside the museum collection. The Long Shop provides a unique home for the exhibition, with its historic ties to the surrounding agricultural heritage of the land and its inhabitants. Exploring the artefacts and artworks on display, it is possible to walk a pathway across the centuries, from pre-industrial farming equipment, through the industrial revolution and the radical changes it brought, to current technological and environmental shifts that have seen this market town and surrounding countryside transformed.

We have all felt the dramatic changes underway in this region, with major energy infrastructure under construction and an increase in coastal erosion. As a border between land and sea, shaped by its twice-daily tides and geological change measured over millennia, the coast is a liminal space. These kinds of transitory zones are fertile ground for creative expression as they force us to become aware of and adapt to familiar patterns. Today, as the Suffolk coast undergoes a unique period of visual and functional upheaval, it has also become a liminal space of change and uncertainty.

The energy developments bring complexity and tensions. Construction of a new dual-reactor nuclear power station is underway, accompanied by polarised debate and long-term implications. Alongside it, offshore renewable energy infrastructure is arriving, essential for reducing the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise in this low-lying area, yet adding new man-made structures to Suffolk's rural coast.

Edge Land evokes a land in flux, at the threshold of transformation. A landscape in transition; shifting coastlines, eroding cliffs, and expanding marshes, all literal edge lands being reshaped by wind, water, and human intervention. This moment of upheaval and contradiction is a shared focus. How the artists and writers choose to engage with the project is up to them.

Exhibiting: Amy Marie Gladding, Andrew Smith, Angus Stewart, Bryony Graham, Caroline Poole, Caroline Wright, Elizabeth Ferretti, Gus Farnes, Jennifer Hall, Jude Lockie, Julie Garton, Juliet Lockhart, Kristina Tonev, Lizzi Thistlethwayte, Margaret Wyllie, Mary Wyatt, Paul Morris, Richard Allenby-Pratt, Rosie Andersen, Veronica Worrall and Victoria Proctor.