Another chance to experience a fascinating, atmospheric exhibition of found, natural objects by local artist Paul Elsam.


Paul writes: "The coastline here in North Yorkshire is dynamic, offering fresh gifts with each violent new tide. It’s a landscape of crumbling cliffs, giant rocks, flash-flood mud slides, fossils, tidal pools - and strange driftwood.

I’ve always been a collector, and for a while fossils were the big draw. Driftwood seemed just that: sea-dumped tree fragments gnawed by nature, and often too-much-softened by the sea. But, bringing pieces home to dry and ‘work’ them, I could see the sea’s dynamism within each emerging shape.

I began developing my own cyclical process of cleaning, drying, rough-sculpting and fine-working - respecting, always, the emerging abstract shape within each piece (some likely thousands of years old).

So what will you experience when you visit? It’s there in the title ‘Drift/Lit(tle)’: quirky worked driftwood shown in a 'shop window'-style pop-up gallery, subtly lit to stir your feelings as you peer in."

Paul Elsam

With thanks to TransPennine Express for their support in making this exhibition possible.