New art installation unveiled at Scarborough's Woodend Gallery

She spent a week working alongside student and Crescent Arts intern Kelly To and art

foundation students Liberty Ingham, Grace Robinson, Hollie Maxwell, Sophie

Lindley, Elijah Welsh and George Mainprize.

The image Kate has chosen is that of a bee orchid, a wildflower most commonly

found in the southern parts of the British Isles.

The flower’s numbers have been dwindling over recent years and are scarcer in the northern regions. These orchids can be found on North Bay cliffs or what has become known locally as the Orchid Terrace.

The installion is called We Are Our Own Promised Land.

It’s a statement that references landscapes – a paradise perhaps – where salvation and liberation are possible,” said Kate. The work concerns itself with the representation of an internal and external landscape at Woodend.

"A total work completed in the imagination but drawn from life, being influenced by Scarborough and its surroundings,” she said.

In 2019 Tim Burkinshaw of Scarborough Council wrote: The Orchid terrace might perhaps be more appropriately renamed ‘Peter’s Terrace’, for the yearly monitoring and great diligence of the late local naturalist and retired schoolmaster Peter Robinson. “Up until his death assiduously scaled the slope in two-metre transect strips to count the show of flowers.”

Kate’s interaction with the space has been one of understanding its

characteristics and history. Woodend Gallery is rooted in its past as a greenhouse,

and within this, there is a subconscious draw to its green heritage, especially with

many of the artists who have chosen to work in the space.

The characteristics of this installation are unique. It can be witnessed both inward and outward of the space. During the daytime, the window installation is illuminated from the inside out with natural lighting, and as the night rolls in the artwork is to be viewed from the outside, brought to life by the gallery lights.