In the context where contemporary art is increasingly shaped by the rhythms of galleries and art fairs, the summer programme of Goodwood Art Foundation proposes an alternative mode of viewing.
Founded in 2025, the foundation is located at the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex, United Kingdom, adjacent to the global headquarters of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
The exhibition (2nd May – 1st November 2026) is presented in collaboration between the foundation and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, bringing together over 50 works – including sculpture, installation, ceramics, textiles, photography, film, print, and painting – across two gallery spaces, the restaurant “24”, and a 70-acre landscape.
The exhibition centres on the American land artist Nancy Holt, presenting her first major exhibition in the UK, while a newly commissioned work by Irish artist Eva Rothschild establishes the primary thread of the interior spaces. Meanwhile, sculptures and installations by Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, and Polly Apfelbaum extend into the outdoor landscape, allowing art to flow between architecture, landscape, and everyday space. Notably, Apfelbaum’s work is installed within the atrium and walls of the restaurant “24”, further embedding art into lived environments. The project is advised by former Tate curator Ann Gallagher OBE, and developed in collaboration with curator Lisa Le Feuvre, curator Eleanor Clarke, and their team; under the direction of CEO Tracey Greaves and director Richard Grindy, together with landscape designer Dan Pearson OBE and architecture studio Studio Downie, the project brings art, architecture, & environment into an interdependent system.
The exhibition traces Nancy Holt’s practice from her early poetic works to her later large-scale outdoor installations. At the entrance to the forest, Holt’s large-scale installation Ventilation System extends from the outdoors through the windows into the gallery space.
The exhibition title MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater is drawn from Holt’s own work, in which words from a circular poem – an important motif in her practice. The circle, for Holt, evokes the form of the cosmos and the movement of celestial bodies, while also extending human vision. In her work Light and Shadow Photo Drawings, light projected through forms produces curved shapes on the wall, resembling drawing. Here, photography shifts from a recording device to a generative tool. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Holt developed works based on hidden urban infrastructures – drainage, heating, electricity, ventilation – bringing attention to systems that remain constantly active yet largely unnoticed. A series of circular mirrors reflects light across the space, transforming it into elongated elliptical forms. Her seminal work Sun Tunnels, located in the Utah desert, aligns with the solstices and contains perforations mapping constellations including Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. In Hydra’s Head, installed at Goodwood, each pool corresponds to a star in the Hydra constellation, with its size reflecting stellar magnitude. Holt sought to connect terrestrial space with cosmic energy, allowing viewers to perceive the sky through reflected light in water.
Moving through the landscape, works by Lee Ufan evoke material essence, while sculptures by Solange Pessoa and Rachel Whiteread engage with fragility and memory. Installations by Eva Rothschild invite bodily interaction, contrasting exterior restraint with interior colour. Sound works by Susan Philipsz unfold across the forest, gradually layering into a polyphonic experience.
Eva Rothschild’s practice reconfigures perception through structure, material, and process. She abstracts forms such as barriers and defensive structures, revealing how systems of safety also produce control and tension. By reversing material expectations – transforming soft textiles into rigid forms – she uses weaving as a mode of image production that resists digital precision. Through these strategies, viewers shift from recognition to renewed perception. It moves from “what we see” to “how we perceive through time and space.
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