Rye Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, which opened on Saturday 9 May, is A Confluence of Elements: artworks by Russell Burden and Melvyn Evans inspired by the ancient landscape of the Weald and river valleys surrounding the medieval manor house and remains of Lossenham Priory. Set on a low ridge alongside the flood plains and valleys of the Rother and its tributaries, it is one of the earliest Carmelite monasteries, founded in 1273 by Sir Thomas Aucher, the Lord of Lossenham. In 1275 the priory was destroyed by fire but was rebuilt and occupied until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538.
Russell Burden is the artist-in-residence of the Lossenham Poject, which is investigating the landscape and history of the site and surrounding area of marsh, rivers and sea. Exploring the geology of the area, Russell has worked the clay, silt, sands, iron and stone grinding them into fine powder to create pigments and mineral paints.
Vessel of Affordances (Lossenham 2026) the centrepiece in the gallery, displays the pigments in glass jars, a distillation of the landscape, lined on a boat painted using one of the pigments; “an ark of minerals”, suggesting symbolic journeys of the body and soul: the Carmelite monks travelling the sea and Rother, the funerary boat models of the Ancient Egyptians, or Earth travelling in space.
Printmaker, illustrator and painter, Melvyn Evans (whose work will be familiar to regular gallery visitors) began a one-year residency in November 2024, working collaboratively with Russell to create paintings and prints from the pigments, and sculptures from wood, iron nails and stone.
Melvyn’s paintings and prints are a response to the layered history of the place. Reflections of an Ancient Land, a six-colour linocut, contains the forms, colours and patterns of the natural world blending with the suggestions of carved figures, and mystical motifs like those seen in his Moon Totem and Sun Totem sculptures.
Three paintings, Lossenham Triptych by Melvyn, capture some of the interconnectedness between the work and Lossenham, and between the two artists. The pigment and paint were created by Russell and Melvyn from the minerals foraged; the ground for the paintings was made not from traditional gesso, but from the waste chalk and dust collected from Melvyn’s Altar Stones sculpture carved from chalk found around the Priory site. The pre-Anglo-Saxon and early Christian symbolism of the tree recurs in all three works, a response to both the landscape and the religious setting.
Russell’s sculptures, Forms of Clearance and Mollusk contain the many layers of the world’s history: tiny shells laid down in the river beds of the Weald 134 million years ago are trapped and fossilised in iron-rich calcite stone found in the fields and pools of Lossenham and are shaped and smoothed and polished by Russell – a version of the worked flints or axeheads excavated at the site.
Over his five-year residency, Russell has worked in a variety of mediums: photography, writing (his fieldnotes are beautifully observed), pin-hole camera images, soundscapes, cyanotype prints, painting and sculpture, many examples featured in the show.
A film made by Kit Warren Uncertain Boundaries, playing in the top floor studio, is a gorgeous contemplation of the processes Russell uses in his work. Beautifully filmed and lit, with close cropped shots of the landscape and showing the tactile and precise nature of the process, it is accompanied by the sounds of bird song, trickling water, the clinking of glass and chipping of stone along with music written by Russell. Give yourself time to watch it, as it is not to be missed.
Also included are atmospheric black and white photographs of the Lossenham landscape by Terry Hulf and paintings by Natasha Cooke, Silver award winner of Rye Art Gallery’s 2025 En Plein Air Competition, capturing the wind-blown trees and undergrowth she saw during her visit in March 2026.
It is a fascinating and inspiring exhibition whose images and themes leave the viewer with much to reflect upon. It is a moving homage to the beauty and history of the area, to the physical and metaphysical, the external and internal, best explained in the words of the artists themselves.
” I have been exploring the materiality and the sense of place in the Lossenham landscape. For me, it has been a place of hidden diversity, hidden in the sense that the simplicity of the environment that one initially encounters belies the profusion of detail that unfolds through closer observation. I could cite the wide range of pigment colours to be discovered in the clays, minerals and iron oxides, the unexpected tapestry of sub-surface sounds within the ponds, and Lossenham can be such a visceral and intimate retreat, a place of seclusion and quietude that affords both time and space to contemplate one’s inner landscape and, over time, a sense of emptying out has naturally happened.” (Russell Burden)
“The experience of working at Lossenham has been wonderful, the freedom to explore layers of geology and history, to handle foraged minerals and clays, and the opportunity to wander along new creative paths. The peace of the Lossenham landscape allows for inner contemplation; sensations within can take precedence over a figurative portrayal of nature. The notion arises that an accumulated history has an energy, a stored charge within the deposits of soil, sands, clays and iron; part of the materiality of each pigment foraged from the ground is different, and therefore each pigment influences and guides the form of the resulting painting.” (Melvyn Evans)
Image Credits: Juliet Duff , Russell Burden , Jeff Grice , Melvyn Evans , Russell Burden/Kit Warren/Lossenham Project .