Art, education and environment. These are the three pillars at the heart of the newly launched not-for-profit Goodwood Art Foundation near Chichester, Sussex.
Art is covered by a programme curated by Ann Gallagher OBE, which includes a headline exhibition devoted to Rachel Whiteread and a season featuring prominent international artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Veronica Ryan, Susan Philipsz, Lubna Chowdhary and Rose Wylie.
Education is supported by an ambitious learning programme strategy developed by Sally Bacon OBE, which focuses on championing and delivering art education for children and young people.
Environment by the programme of landscape development and management by the award-winning horticulturist and landscape designer Dan Pearson OBE, who has transformed 70 acres on the Goodwood Estate.
There is also a new restaurant, Café 24, housed in a glass and silver aluminium-clad building designed by Studio Downie Architects, which offers a small plates menu showcasing seasonal and foraged ingredients alongside organic produce from the Goodwood estate. All of these elements combined will make the Goodwood Art Foundation a major new destination for contemporary art. The café features two large-scale collage works by Lubna Chowdhary and a presentation of her ceramic ‘Markers’.
A visitor’s guide suggests alternative walks, either leading you through the Art trail to the amphitheatre, through the Chalk Quarry and Cherry Grove or through the ancient woodland and wildflower meadows.
Rachel Whiteread’s works are shown both inside, in the newly renovated two-room gallery space, and outside in the environment. Inside, two major sculptural pieces are displayed alongside some of Whiteread’s lesser-known photographs of urban environments and eccentric features drawn from her travels and everyday encounters. Whiteread uses plaster, concrete and resin to cast the surfaces of everyday objects and architectural spaces. Doppelgänger (2020-21) is a recreation of a dilapidated, abandoned hut painted with white emulsion, where you can pick out fallen branches, a wooden door, and a corrugated iron roof, centrally placed in the gallery, surrounded by her photos. A second space displays her tombstone-like marble installation, first shown in Bergamo, Italy, in 2023, mourning the loss of those affected by COVID-19.
Whiteread has three works in the open air. Down and Up (2024-25) features two concrete, steep staircases situated in an open field. It was cast from a disused Synagogue in Bethnal Green. I visited on a grey day when the colour of the stone mimicked the drabness of the sky. With different weather conditions, the piece will create different moods. A monolith for the modern age.
Detached II (2012) is discreetly situated down a newly created path in the ancient woodland. It is very tactile, with shapes cut out of it resembling sealed windows and doors of a forgotten shed. The third sculpture is Untitled (Pair), 1999, with glossy tops cast from a mortuary slab. A pair of sarcophagi without a named dedication. White and clinical, contrasting with the luscious green surroundings.
The other artworks on the Art Trail are two pineapple sculptures by Rose Wylie. The oversized Pineapple (2023) overlooks the chalk quarry, and the Pale-Pink Pineapple/Bomb (2025) is situated in an opening between the trees that looks towards the coast.
Veronica Ryan’s two sculptures reference the surrounding landscape, utilising a magnolia motif: one as a germinating pod and the other as a flower in full bloom, representing natural life cycles in perfect symbiosis with the environment. Susan Philipsz’s haunting sound installation, emanating from high in the trees of the ancient woodland, features four overlapping vocal recordings based on Elizabethan songs and references the history of the land.
In contrast, Isamu Noguchi’s bright red, painted fibreglass Octetra (three-element stack) of 1968/2021 consists of three interlocking geometric forms, originally designed as a play structure, and remains contemporary.
Goodwood Art Foundation, near Chichester, West Sussex
Visit Here