Burrow / 2026

Burrow is a sculptural installation and publication, presented as part of SOIL, a National Trust exhibition at Sizergh Castle.

This work was developed through collaborative and interdisciplinary research methods and the building of relationships with, and connections between, farmers, artists, scientists and academics. Clough spent time visiting farms across North Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria and listening to the experience of farmers. She worked with soil scientists at Lancaster Centre for the Environment, land based practitioners on the National Trust Sizergh estate and experts in ornithology and archeology. In doing this she hoped to become aware of common ground and disparities between different ways of thinking about / working with the soils and to use artistic means as a way to explore these challenges and connect opposing ideas. The publication created serves as an archive of this process and a chance for some of these voices to be documented, as well as an exploration of ideas about the earth itself.

Burrow challenges what it means to ‘understand’ soil and that this can be different to measuring what is happening literally under the ground. It encourages a consideration that something we will never truly see is physically reflected in our bodies, emotionally influential over us and connected to us in multiple ways.

‘Here, a grain of dust swells to become a polished bead. A worm becomes an ear trumpet. A column of earth is raised into the shape of a barn, an iron shed. A landscape becomes the skin of a poised body. One of the distinctive qualities of the making-thinking underpinning such art is that it asks us to see the subject differently in what is made: an extra dimension opens, altering how that thing can be apprehended. In this project, it is the earth itself that has been opened up. The devices assembled in the exhibition operate as emblems of a kind of deep access that Liz herself earns in the studio — but they are also invitations to, ourselves, listen to what the earth is saying as we together decay, complicate, animate and are reborn.’  Dr Nathan Jones: School of Arts, Lancaster University

Burrow is the final part of Elizabeth Clough’s new body of work developed over a year. It expands on the exhibition, HARBINGER and the installation, performance and immersive workshop series, The Circle, a whole, a sun, a meeting, curated and produced by Deco Publique. These three works by the artist have been designed to provoke interdisciplinary action and connectedness.

This work is part of the Morecambe Bay Coastal Commissioning Programme founded by Deco Publique and theCOLAB which explores the development of the local cultural ecology. With support from an AHRC Impact Acceleration grant this aspect of the programme looks to investigate the opportunity for dialogue between artists and arts practice, and academics and the academic institution drawing on research by Dr Nathan Jones at Lancaster University.

Photographed by Debbie Yare