A major new destination for contemporary art has opened in Sussex. The Goodwood Art Foundation was inaugurated by the Duke of Richmond and artist Rachel Whiteread, and opened to the public on 31st May, offering a unique combination of gallery spaces and a sculpture garden set within a 70-acre landscape.
The foundation launched with a group presentation featuring works by internationally renowned artists including Isamu Noguchi (USA), Hélio Oiticica (Brazil), Susan Philipsz (Scotland), Veronica Ryan (Montserrat), Amie Siegel (USA), and Rose Wylie (UK). These installations accompany the foundation’s inaugural solo exhibition, a major presentation of work by Turner Prize-winning artist Rachel Whiteread, on view until 2nd November, 2025.
Highlights of the Goodwood Art Foundation’s sculpture garden include Rose Wylie’s giant Pink Pineapple and playful sculptures by the late Japanese American artist, Isamu Noguchi. And not to be missed is a solo exhibition dedicated to Rachel Whiteread, featuring a major new outdoor work cast in concrete.
Known for her large scale, witty paintings, containing imagery from mass media, literature and personal memory, Rose Wylie (b.1934) has in recent years also produced painted bronze sculptures that expand her characteristic aesthetic. Pink Pineapple (2025), takes as its subject the now commonplace fruit, considered highly exotic when first introduced to Europe in the 17th century from South America. It was adopted as a luxurious cultural icon and incorporated into architectural and decorative artforms, as a motif symbolising wealth and hospitality. The fruit was also considered to have divine proportions and became a symbol of beauty, fertility and femininity. Wylie was drawn to the pineapple model due to its proportions, especially its particularly lengthy leaves and its character, which reminded her of the English expression ‘prickly woman’, used to describe a woman unafraid to make her presence felt.
One of the most highly respected sculptors of her generation and the first woman to win the Turner Prize, Rachel Whiteread (b.1963), is the subject of an exhibition presented in partnership with Rolls-Royce Motor Cars across the Foundation. The exhibition brings together a selection of Whiteread’s sculptures, including a major new outdoor work cast in concrete, with a group of her recent photographs featuring outdoor elements and views that are on display for the first time.
Ann Gallagher, Consultant Curator comments: “Alongside Rachel Whiteread’s inaugural exhibition, the opening season profiles prominent international artists, whose work has a particular affinity with the natural environment or the specific history of Goodwood. Spread throughout and integrated within the varied landscapes of the Foundation, each work is located in a specifically selected setting, to be discovered by visitors amongst the natural features.“
Two sculptures by the late Japanese American artist, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) introduce a future presentation of work at the Foundation. An artist who innovatively addressed our relationship with matter in space, his career spanned sculpture, architecture, dance and design and is closely associated with landscape and public space. His sculptures were conceived as tools for exploring nature and human relationships. Octetra (three element stack) (1968/2021) forms part of the artist’s Playscapes series, sculptures that also demonstrate the artist’s fascination with geometry and the interplay between positive and negative space.
A large-scale installation by the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) is the first outdoor sculpture by the artist to be unveiled in Europe. A highly influential figure in 20th century art, Oiticica coined the term Tropicalia that came to identify an entire movement of art, music and Brazilian identity in the late 1960’s. He is known for his innovative exploration of colour and works from his Magic Square series (developed between 1977 and 1979) are monumental embodiments of these investigations. The Invention of Colour: Magic Square #3 (1977-79/2025) has been constructed at Goodwood according to the late artist’s instructions, and audiences can interact with the installation, in an integrated experience with nature, and move around the colourful, labyrinthine structure.
A poignant sound work by acclaimed, Berlin based, Scottish artist Susan Philipsz (b.1965)–winner of the 2010 Turner Prize–is also on display. As Many As Will (2015) features four singing voices that emerge from trees within a woodland area of the Foundation, interweaving and overlapping to create an immersive vocal work with shifting rhythms. The recordings are all connected to movement and dance and are based on 16th century sources, three from country dances first published in a collection by Thomas Ravencroft, Pammelia (1609). The title of the work comes from John Playford’s English Dancing Master (1651), a popular guidebook for country dancing, and is an invitation for all to participate.
Recent Turner Prize winner, Montserrat born British artist Veronica Ryan (b. 1956), is presenting new works in the opening season at Goodwood Art Foundation. Her sculpture explores the resonance of form using a varied combination of materials and frequently references the organic to examine ‘the interconnection between the landscape, one’s interior self, one’s exterior self, one’s cultural heritage..’. The magnolia is an ancient horticultural genus that survives in a variety of climates and has therefore gathered an abundance of symbolic meanings. References to the species in Ryan’s new sculptures at Goodwood Art Foundation echo the planting in the surrounding landscape.
A film installation and works on paper by New York based artist Amie Siegel (b 1974) occupy the Pavilion Gallery. Known for her meticulously layered works that trace the undercurrents of cultural ownership and image-making, her acclaimed film Bloodlines (2022) follows the movement of paintings by British artist George Stubbs (1724-1806) from private stately homes and museum collections to public exhibition. Siegel’s deft composition and associative editing allow subtle readings and questionings of our cultural heritage.
Siegel’s print series Cloudes (2023) features ten studies that transpose and combine details of the sky as portrayed in paintings by Stubbs — puffs and veils of cloud, atmosphere and greenery — on a one-to-one scale with the original paintings, underscoring her interest in temporality, montage and the material image. Stubbs spent nine months at Goodwood painting three sporting scenes which remain part of Goodwood’s historic art collection. Siegel’s work provides a vital link to Goodwood’s past and present involvement in contemporary art.
The inaugural Goodwood Art Foundation art programme runs until 2nd November, 2025.
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