JONATHAN HATELEY
Sarina and I moved to our home in Sedlescombe in 2022, from a 3 bedroom semi-detached in Tonbridge to a bungalow by the banks of the A21. I questioned Sarina’s sanity when she told me after viewing the place that she loved it and wanted it. I loved the land and the potential for creating my sculpture, but the house needed lots of work and the busy road wasn’t really how I’d imagined my move into the countryside. We soon learned we both wanted the house when we temporarily lost it to another buyer. It was meant to be ours after all, and the road has proved the perfect link to everywhere in East Sussex and beyond. Once we drive up our lane, we pretty much leave the world and the A21 behind us… we love it.
The first year was spent getting the barns ready for working in… one needed a complete overhaul, and beyond that, we spent the next few years working on the land almost every weekend. We gained levels of fitness beyond what our bodies had previously known, having struggled with our moderately sized garden in Tonbridge. This was a big challenge. The fields had been left untouched for some years and were covered high in brambles making it difficult to venture anywhere beyond the first bumpy grassy field.
The fields were gradually exposed and the strips of woodland gave us areas to map out pathways to walk. This year, before the summer turned the grass yellow, the land was looking the best it had since we became its guardians.
I began contemplating a sculpture trail a few years ago, but it wasn’t until a meeting with Lesley Samms of the Pure Arts Group that the idea gained traction. ‘Pure' had recently shown at the 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, where the stand had gained much acclaim. Indeed, it was wonderful to see so many people taking photos and asking about my sculptures. It seemed appropriate, despite all the hard work involved in that event, to try and do something similar with many of the same artists (and more). It would be an exciting thing to do… without the flowers and the London traffic! We had less than 3 months to organise our first sculpture trail and art exhibition and not least, try to persuade the artists to take part.
I know only too well that my work is generally assigned to exhibitions and galleries well in advance, so the challenge was on to see if anyone had a gap in their schedule.
We have been delighted with the calibre of the artists who have agreed to exhibit their work on our land. Not only do we have the main artists from RHS Chelsea including Louisa Crispin, but also sculptors whose work I have seen many times in the same exhibitions, including the ever popular Jeremy Moulsdale, Lucy d’Auvergne and Nicola Godden. Nicola and I both show at Sculpture by the Lakes in Dorset, so I am very grateful that she has agreed to bring some work to our version… Sculpture by the A21!
The four of us are now part of the 'Artisan Collective’ together with Alison Holt, who is also exhibiting her beautiful embroidered paintings with us. I shall say no more, as you can read about each artist below. We are so grateful to Lesley Samms of the Pure Arts Group for supporting us in this venture, and to all the artists taking part. We truly hope those who visit will be as blown away by this collection of work as we are.
The inaugural Sussex Art & Sculpture Trail 2026 is an exhibition hosted by sculptor Jonathan Hateley in his grounds near Sedlescombe, East Sussex, and supported by the Pure Arts Group.
This promises to be an inspiring exhibition showcasing an exceptional collection of over 150 artworks featuring sculpture and contemporary visual art in a beautiful rural setting, attracting visitors from across Sussex and beyond.
The event will feature both an outside sculpture trail and artwork displayed inside Jonathan's working studio and barns.
THE SUSSEX ART & SCULPTURE TRAIL 2026
Saturday 5th – Saturday 19th September 2026
Open daily, 11am–5pm · Free admission
Late evenings. Saturday 5th & 12th September until 7pm.
Bring a picnic and enjoy the trail into the evening. Entry is free, but booking is required for the late evenings.TICKETS
Footwear & Ground Conditions. The trail takes you through a mix of indoor spaces and open fields. Parts of the route cross uneven grass and natural terrain, so we recommend sturdy shoes, walking boots or wellies. After rain, some areas may become muddy.
Accessibility. We want everyone to enjoy the trail as comfortably as possible. The outdoor trail is on uneven grass fields and is generally suitable for manual and all-terrain wheelchairs in dry conditions.
The indoor exhibitions are housed in two small barns, each with a single step at the entrance. A moveable ramp is available on request. Please note that the barns are rustic spaces and can be tight to navigate, particularly around the artwork.
If you have specific access requirements or would like to discuss your visit beforehand, please get in touch — we're very happy to help.
Parking. All visitors will be directed to park in the fields.
Woodland & Wildlife. You’re welcome to explore the woodland areas, at your own risk, but please take care on uneven ground and around hidden roots or holes. We share the land with local wildlife, including deer, so please enjoy it with care.
Dogs. Well-behaved dogs on leads are welcome.
Questions?
For further information or specific access enquiries, please contact us at contact@jonathanhateley.com.
LOCATION - HOW TO FIND US:
WOODLAND RETREAT, Kent Street, Sedlescombe (Near Battle) TN33 0SG.
Look out for the high-vis reflector posts and signage marking the entrance.
Access is via the A21, opposite New England Lane, on the brow of the hill after Blackbrooks Garden Centre/Sedlescombe Golf Course, depending on your direction of travel.
ARRIVAL & PARKING
The Sussex Art & Sculpture Trail is open daily 5–19 September, 11am–5pm. Please note that the venue is located down a quiet, narrow residential lane. To help keep everyone safe and respect our neighbours, we’d be very grateful if you could avoid entering or waiting in the lane outside these hours.
Arriving early? Please do not enter or wait in the lane, as this blocks access for local residents. Instead, Blackbrooks Garden Centre, just one minute along the A21, has parking and a café.
Accidentally entered the lane out of hours? A small turning circle is a short distance down the lane. Please turn around and head back to the A21, then wait at Blackbrooks until 11am.
Parking. Please follow the direction arrows to parking in the fields.
Thank you for helping us keep our local community safe and happy!
See location map on left and Google map link below for further details.
Location What3Words: glows.greetings.rung
Ali Dempster has been in the creative design environment all his life, Staring with a art college in a 3D design course with multi media. A career in the creative area of the film industry doing set design and special effects, then retraining as a garden designer 27 years ago and moving into the garden outdoor world.
He has always been fascinated by the structure of nature the way it naturally created its beauty and how this can be enhanced reorganised and restructured in Land Art. Since first seeing Christo and Jeane Claudes and Robert Smithson work in the late 70s and early 80s. Since discovering Andy Goldworthys style of Land art and his creation of numerous natural sculptures throughout the UK and wider world, inspired many sculptural elements of his garden design.
Taking all this past experience and focusing it into his natural sculptural creations, using mainly locally founds objects from Beach cobbles and wood, fallen branches and locally felled English trees, beech, oak, Ash, conifer. It is fundamentally important to Ali to tread as lightly as possible on the earth with each sculptural creation, reusing, recycling, lowering transport miles, and consumption to as little as possible.
Pulling on influences from nature, cosmology and geological forms. Ali is continually taking new looks at the ways natures structures come together, the textured, smooth, polished or machined elements of his unique one-off sculptural creations mean each work is highly individual and not replicated.
ALI DEMPSTER
Alison Holt is a textile artist who combines silk painting with free-motion machine embroidery to create richly layered surfaces and textures. Using a basic sewing machine as a drawing tool, each stitch is like a textured brushstroke. She produces detailed and expressive studies inspired by landscapes and the natural world.
Her practice is driven by a long-standing fascination with light, colour, and pattern. Through the interplay of stitch and paint, Alison captures fleeting moments and personal memories, motivated by a desire to observe, record, and interpret her surroundings.
Alison has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Textiles from Goldsmiths College London.
With a career spanning more than 40 years she is a regular exhibitor at selected exhibitions in the Mall Galleries London and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
Alison is an Associate of the Royal Society of Graphic Fine Art.
ALISON HOLT
Carole Bury FRSA designs and crafts paper textiles, using drawing, embroidery and constructional techniques, which hold a beauty, depth and quietness. Working with nature, presents her with rhythms, pathways and marks, which invade the work slowly and unobtrusively. The starting point for all her work, is always drawing and understanding and interpreting a ‘Place.’
She lives and works in a small rural village, high in the Cotswold Hills in the UK. Her garden, with adjoining allotment and remarkably easy access out into the surrounding fields and woods provide plenty of inspiration. The light filled Studio is her place of dreams.
Carole has a background in drawing from Cheltenham College of Art and fine art embroidery from Manchester Polytechnic. She teaches drawing, extending techniques to small groups.
Carole is an exhibiting member of Pure Arts Group, also IAPMA, the international association of paper makers and artists. Exhibits widely with the ARTCAN Organisation, the RSA House in London and small galleries in the UK. Is actively involved in the Bi-annual Cheltenham Open Studios. Work has recently been included in the ING Discerning Eye and the RWA in Bristol.
CAROLE BURY
Born in London, April 1964, the always charismatic david apps grew up in the Thames Estuary Essex, and later moved to East London where he took up photography. Taking thousands of photographs david continues to develop an eye for capturing anything and anyone he takes a photo of in his own unique, thought-provoking way.
david’s passion for his art has led to him staging six exhibitions a year for the past six years: in London, Brighton, Cambridge, Newcastle and Berlin.
For his creations, david only uses his own images, and re-works the imagery to create contemporary, striking works of art. To further his vision, he uses antiqued mirror over these hand panted designs, only allowing a small part of the image to be visible through the mirrored glass. He then designs and makes a custom handmade frame, using toys, jewellery and other ephemera.
Inspired by the South East coast, in April 2014 david exited East London and relocated to the vibrant City of Brighton, where he has staged five successful exhibitions. In October 2016 he moved again, this time to the beautiful village of Alfriston in East Sussex. Each move to a new environment has proved influential on david’s creations – his latest work being a magical mix of the countryside that surrounds him, spliced with his love for the films of Tim Burton and the architecture of Gaudi. In a life dominated by subversion, the art of david apps is dark, angelic, evocative, kitsch, vibrant, very British, and very ‘now’ – you cannot look at david’s designs without wanting to return to them, again and again.
*Artist's name is styled according to personal preference and branding
david apps
David Cruickshank is a Jamaican born, British artist who creates biomorphic forms in wood. From chainsaw to chisel, he has spent a lifetime exploring his love for trees and his intertwined history with them. From a young child climbing, to tree surgeon and conservationist of old structures, he has a deep rooted passion & respect for the woodlands and wood as a medium to express himself.
His tactile and evocative subjects are arrived at by following the grain of the wood unique to every piece. The splits and shakes of lumps of wood that have been seasoned for many years guide his eye and hand to discover the core of the character embodied in the organic growth of the tree.
Cruickshank not afraid to embrace technology and explore the potentials of the modern world with his existing history and the natural world. He has begun to explore the language and materiality of an object when it's scale or medium has changed.
Leaving new editions of original work cast in cold cast bronze and foundry bronze. Only a few of the older wooden originals remain as most have been collected. However Cruickshank is exploring some new pieces which will be announced soon.
DAVID CRUICKSHANK
After a successful business career, building a design and marketing consultancy, David decided to change course and spend more time in a purely creative role. A course at Schumacher College in Dartington some 25 years ago inspired him to rekindle his early passion for poetry and art in all forms. He now enjoys writing, painting, life drawing and sculpting in a variety of materials.
Like many artists, David is inspired by the natural world and how it affects us. In his words:
‘I love nature and am fascinated by our relationship to it – we get a special feeling, almost kinship, from certain rocks; peace from watching a river; awe as we stand under a regal beech tree; a child-like joy from playing in the surf. It is that relationship I want to explore through my work.’
‘I encourage people to touch my sculptures, to feel the texture and form, to connect. With many of my sculptures, comes a poem. The words seem to suggest themselves readily after so many hours and days spent in the creative process. I hope the poetry enhances the pleasure of the eventual owner, bringing them closer to the piece.’
David is a former Deputy Chair of Surrey Sculpture Society. His work has won many awards, is widely exhibited and is in private collections around the UK, Europe and the USA.
DAVID PAYNTER
Ellie designs and creates beautiful, contemporary stained glass sculptures for outside spaces. Her bold designs are inspired by her love of nature and mostly have botanical themes. Ellie uses traditional techniques to handcraft her sculptures incorporating exquisite coloured and textured glass, giving a quality of depth and life as the weather and seasons change.
ELLIE DRAKE-LEE
My art training was a non-training. I left university with a First-Class Honours in how to BS and play the game. I thought I'd 'won' but on leaving education reality hit me like a brick wall and totally floored me.
That was the worst experience of my life but the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the start of a journey that 25 years later still continues. In that time, I have lived in a tent in the foothills of the Himalayas for 6 months, spent a year saving tortoises in South Africa and 5 years living in a mud hut in a refugee camp in Sudan.
Everything I have seen has confirmed to me that humanity has got something fundamentally wrong, but I am not a pessimist. I have a deep faith, not in any religion, but in the truth. Keats' words are my keystone in life: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
These words guide me and keep me grounded.
Fundamentally I am an anarchist, but not a proponent of the silly version of anarchy that we're presented with through the media. True anarchism proposes that natural harmony will result as the restrictive layers of state control and authoritarianism are abandone. When the human soul is honoured and respected it will step up to the mark and shine, but like any over disciplined child, it currently winces and cowers at a raised hand and shrinks from it's true, magical potential.
Like all artists I try and reflect back that sense of wonder and beauty to the viewer so that on this journey we stray not too far from the path.
JAKE FERN
I create contemplative sculptures that re-kindle a sense of connection and enchantment with nature and the landscape.
Living in East Sussex near the sea, I love to walk along the cliffs and beaches, where the earth, sea and sky meet and merge. Where my worries can melt into the vastness of the landscape and I can feel overwhelmed by the majesty of it all.
This is what I explore in my sculptures, my reverence for the mystery, majesty, and wonder of life. My work is a celebration of the connection between nature and spirit, self and landscape.
I sculpt to make my world more whole and connected by listening internally to a soulful language that wants to join things together, to build bridges and form bonds. It is a language with which it becomes possible to talk with the birds, gather stardust and sing to the moon. The focus is not logic, rather the recognition that we exist in a universe of unfolding wonders.
Before I became a full time sculptor I spent many years working as a gardener. My last position was as Head Gardener in a 200 year old garden by the sea. I loved spending so much time outdoors, connected to the natural world with my hands in the earth. It was a very natural progression for me to start creating sculptures for gardens. I’ve now been sculpting for over 25 years and my works are enjoyed in homes and gardens around the world.
JEREMY MOULSDALE
Liliana Dobbs FRSA is a UK-based expressionist painter working primarily in oils. Raised on the sub-tropical island of Madeira, her practice is rooted in a lifelong sensitivity to the natural world, where shifting elemental forces and the restorative qualities of nature continue to shape her visual language. Her paintings are not records of place but vessels for the emotions, relationships, and memories that landscapes quietly accumulate.
At the heart of her practice is a desire to preserve moments that might otherwise dissolve into time. Each painting begins with an encounter - a place walked, weather experienced, or a landscape shared with others - and develops into an emotional reconstruction rather than a literal representation. Working slowly in layered oils allows memory and feeling to evolve alongside the painting itself, mirroring the way emotions are slowly absorbed and reinterpreted. For Dobbs, painting is both an act of remembrance and a means of making sense of the enduring imprint that people and places leave upon us.
Balancing energy with stillness, her work offers a quietly compelling counterpoint to the pace of contemporary life. Expanses of calm are held in dialogue with passages of vibrant, textured colour, where gestural mark-making and layered surfaces become active and responsive. Through this dynamic interplay, luminosity and depth coexist with restraint, allowing each work to move between intensity and quietude. These tensions create spaces in which memory, sensation, and introspection converge, inviting viewers to slow their attention and discover their own emotional associations within the work.
Dobbs exhibits regularly across East Anglia, London, and the South East, with work presented in galleries and curated art fairs. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
LILIANA DOBBS
Lost in a world of intricate observations from nature, Louisa is entranced by the cycle of growth and decay. It’s quiet in her Kent studio as she looks ever closer at the flora and fauna. Texture, shadows, silhouettes and movement created with graphite marks and tone, it’s rarely about colour but always about the environment.
Working outside gives a language of immediacy, relinquishing control to the elements and found materials: drawing with ink and grass while lying quietly in a sunny meadow, listening to nature, surrendering to the moment. Invariably she returns to the quiet observations, moments in time delicately captured.
As well as membership of the Free Painters and Sculptors, the Society of Graphic Fine Art, The Entographic Collective and the Wilderness Art Collective, she is a fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists and the Royal Society of Arts. This connection with other artists is an important part of her practice and currently continues through her membership of Pure Arts Group, the Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum and the Bridge Art School FAPD program.
Her prizewinning drawings are held in private collections internationally. She regularly exhibits in London Open Exhibitions and has held solo shows at Muse Gallery, London; Beauport Gallery, Hastings and Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Art Gallery. She is represented by selected UK galleries.
LOUISA CRISPIN
Who are you, when no one is watching?
Through filmmaking, conservation and behavioural study, I have been privileged to spend much of my life in the company of other species. By allowing myself to become secondary to the observed, I have witnessed lives unfolding in real time — not highlights edited for drama and story, but moments when another sentient being is simply immersed in the business of being itself.
What moves me is the quiet integrity of another life. I have spent decades trying to understand the inner lives of non-human animals. Rather than asking what an animal is, I ask who it is. Most lives are lived in the ordinary, and it is within these moments that glimpses of another's inner world emerge. My sculptures seek to give tangible form to those fleeting encounters.
Working directly in clay, I allow close observation to dissolve into abstraction and fragmentation, creating a sense of something both present and fleeting. Cast using stone or metal powders and hand-patinated with raw earth pigments, each sculpture preserves the immediacy and vitality of the original clay.
My work is an invitation to slow down — to look beyond drama, appearance and behaviour, and to encounter another living being on its own terms.
LUCY d’AUVERGNE
Mark Austin FRSA is a British artist whose practice explores the relationship between landscape, movement and form through drawing and sculpture.
His process begins with walking; tracing lines, patterns and textures found in the land. He then transforms those impressions into works that balance gesture and structure.
Working primarily in charcoal and bronze, Mark captures the quiet rhythm of the natural world, turning observation into lasting form. His pieces evoke calm and reflection, bridging the outdoors and the spaces we live in.
MARK AUSTIN
I have been producing figurative sculptures in bronze for over 35 years. Large commissions have included ‘Icarus I’ for the London 2012 Olympic Village, the Sir Peter Scott sculpture for the London Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre in Barnes, the ‘Hammersmith Man’ for the Hammersmith flyover and ‘Survivor’ for Eastman Kodak HQ in the U.S.
The bulk of my work has been sold privately from galleries in the UK, Ireland and America.
Brought up in Africa, the Mediterranean and Asia, I experienced many difference cultures at an early age. There was a lot of space and light and interest all around as I grew up. My earliest influences were African figures and much of my work has continued with the tall, slim and elegant forms of the Maasai people. My time living in Cyprus as a child sparked my interest in Greek mythology.
My work is nearly always based on the human figure, whether in an abstract way (e.g., the Bone Form series) or in a more figuratively realistic way. I have always had a fascination with the human form because of the timeless feelings and emotions it conveys. My figures are nearly always representational of mankind without a particular culture or era.
I enjoy the fact that there have been so many changes to my work, over the years. Different objects and people stimulate my imagination and urge me to create something new, which is why I often work on something completely different from previous work; I enjoy the diversion and stimulation.
In recent years, I have become known for my sculptures depicting the mythological figure Icarus; there have been thirteen in the series so far; the latest and largest work to date is the huge ‘Icarus Rising’ sculpture, which stands at 5m high and 4m wide.
“One of the most exciting aspects of Icarus Rising is its sheer size. Visitors to Sculpture by the Lakes can walk beneath the sculpture, looking up at Icarus' wings as if they’re about to take flight. Standing beneath it, you feel a powerful sense of ambition and daring.”
NICOLA GODDEN, BA MRSS
Tessa Wolfe Murray trained in Ceramics at Goldsmiths College, London 1981-84.
Her work is hand built, sculptural in form but all vessels hold water.
Inspiration for the surface decoration is distilled from a process that begins with photographs taken whilst travelling: sea moods, rock formations, beach debris, horizons, buildings and their surfaces, museum artefacts.
Surfaces are an interplay of incised lines on vessels that have been textured, built up, impressed or distorted. Colour comes from metal oxides mixed into clay and glazes. Some pieces have a final smoke-fired finish.
She has exhibited and accepted commissions worldwide. Her work is held in collections that include Japan, USA, Israel, Singapore, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France, Holland and Belgium.
In the 1990s, She collaborated with the Conran Shop to design and make ranges of vases and lamp bases. She continues to work with interior and product designers.