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The people who walked the Vale of Eden in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, over four thousand years ago, changed the landscape forever. Forests were cleared and ceremonial monuments like stone circles constructed. In the Lake District, mountainsides were quarried on a vast scale in search of stone to make axes. This exhibition creates an encounter between ancient artefacts and specially commissioned contemporary art. It reminds us of the influence that these people continue to exert in the landscape we have inherited from them.
Traditionally, archaeology has offered objective methods for recording and interpreting the past. Artworks offer an alternative response to material from the past - interpretations that communicate with an expressive and subjective character.
Around you is one of the largest collections of Cumbrian prehistoric artefacts ever to be displayed. But instead of presenting these as labelled objects, each might be considered as a piece of the landscape, transformed in exceptional ways. Landscape-based art lies at the heart of British culture and is a route through which we can begin to make sense of the past. Artists often look to the past for the clues that enable them to make works that define the present.
The people of the Neolithic and Bronze Age related to the world in very different ways to us, and we will never fully comprehend their thoughts and motivations. But in contemplating and engaging with the land they populated, we might reveal more about the place we now occupy in the temporal landscapes of Cumbria.