Exhibitions2025Back to the Cave - The Full Spectrum

Back to the Cave: The Full Spectrum

23 May – 31 August 2025
Curated by Rungwe Kingdon and Claude Koenig
In collaboration with Gallery Pangolin

BACK TO THE CAVE: THE FULL SPECTRUM is an exhibition of modern and contemporary sculpture, curated by Rungwe Kingdon and Claude Koenig, that will take place in the ancient Clearwell Caves from 23 May–31 August 2025. The exhibition, focused on the theme of colour, will involve just under sixty British and international modern and contemporary artists, and include works by Geoffrey Clarke, Lynn Chadwick, Maggi Hambling,

Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Polly Morgan, Conrad Shawcross, Gavin Turk, Monira Al Qadiri, Tavares Strachan, Liz West and Hannah Lim.

Visitors to the exhibition will follow a planned route – 550 metres long and up to 30.5 metres below ground – where they will encounter a combination of known sculptures in a new underground setting, together with new and site-specific works. 

Orchestrated by Gallery Pangolin, together with the highly-skilled logistics team from Pangolin Editions, it is the ochre mined at Clearwell Caves, that has prompted the theme of the exhibition: to tell a story of colour. Rungwe Kingdon, the founder of Pangolin Editions and a maker, explains: “This exhibition is an exploration of sculpture in an environment which echoes that of the earliest art we know. Contemporary sculpture comes in a dizzying array of images and media and, so as to make some sense of the diversity and create a contemporary context, Claude [Koenig] and I have chosen colour as a unifying theme. It remains an important reason the caves still function, mining the ochre pigments for artists’ paints. We are going to take visitors on a journey through colour, along the passages and through the caverns of Clearwell Caves.”

Confirmed modern and contemporary artists in Back To The Cave: The Full Spectrum will include: Monira Al Qadiri, Olivia Bax, Bruce Beasley, Hamish Black, Julie Brook, Jon Buck, Rachel Carter, Daniel Chadwick, Lynn Chadwick, Alex Chinneck, Ann Christopher, Geoffrey Clarke, Terence Coventry, Rayvenn D’Clark, Ian Dawson, Steve Dilworth,

Paul De Monchaux, Abigail Fallis, Sally Fawkes, Sue Freeborough, Antony Gormley, Nigel Hall, Maggi Hambling, Nicola Hicks, Damien Hirst, John Hoskin, Steve Hurst, Richard Jackson, Jonathan Kingdon, Bryan Kneale, Hannah Lim, Jeff Lowe, Sarah Lucas, Susie MacMurray, Anita Mandl, Briony Marshall, Charlotte Mayer, Polly Morgan, Daniel Nadler, Breon O’Casey, Eilis O’Connell, Isaac Okwir, Peter Oloya, Angela Palmer, Merete Rasmussen, Colin Reid, Lorraine Robbins, Conrad Shawcross, STIK,

Tavares Strachan, Almuth Tebbenhoff, Lisa Traxler, William Tucker, Gavin Turk, Keith Tyson, Patricia Volk, Moritz Waldemeyer, Jason Wason, and Liz West.

For further information click here.