• Date: Wednesday 05 August
• Time: Doors open 5.45pm, Talk starts 6pm 
  

The Friends of the RWA are thrilled to present our August talk - presented by RWA Academician Sara Dudman. 

After speaking to Friends earlier on this year in the Kenny Gallery, we are thrilled to invite Sara to return to us in the Youngwood Room, to speak more about her current work - Ley of the Land. 

Ley of the Land presents new earth-pigment paintings arising from a series of ‘nomadic-sporadic’ walks undertaken in an ancient Cotswolds Land Circle.  

Through the social walks, folk dancing, foraging for wild earth pigments and unearthing the ancient and modern stories held within the land, Ley of the Land condenses and imagines future, past and present relationships with this rural part of the country. 

Filmmaker Hannah Earl has created an accompanying film which interprets and articulates the experience of the walks, creative processes and conversations with the paints and human collaborators. This is slow art. Paintings have been created from the collected earth pigments, which hold traces of every occupation and event which has ever happened in each location.  The paintings become Deep Maps of the Cotswolds, to be presented in exhibitions, starting at Little Buckland Gallery in September 2026. The works will be shared alongside a 10-year archive of Land Art by Sara. The paintings are joyful celebrations of The Cotswolds themselves and of past, present and future environmental uncertainties.  

With assistance from Evesham Ramblers, Sara and Hannah walked within the Land Circle. Their walking routes took them through the heartlands of the north Cotswolds National Landscape.  

Ley of the Land asks how walking and dancing together, along ancient tracks and making paintings help us understand and express this place and how we live with it. 

Project news : Instagram @saradudman1

Please note: If you book a place at this talk but cannot attend for any reason, please cancel officially either by contacting us or via your confirmation email, so that someone else may take your place. 

This is a talk for Friends of the RWA.

Find out about becoming a Friend of the RWA, the benefits a membership provides, including free access to all RWA exhibitions, a monthly newsletter, access to talks and more.