Finding Common Ground

Alison Neighbour is a UK-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, performance, scenography, and installation. Her practice explores human relationships with the natural world, emphasizing material, place, and time, and often incorporates participatory and embodied experiences. Neighbour’s projects invite audiences to reflect on ecological processes and their own connection to landscapes, fostering awareness, empathy, and gentle calls to action that bridge art, environment, and community.

Alison's sculpture “Finding Common Ground” is a coracle crafted entirely from locally grown, harvested, and shaped materials. The work functions as both vessel and nest, offering a space for reflection on human resilience and our relationship to the wild at the edge of climate crisis. Developed through a Fellowship with Arts Council Wales and Natural Resources Wales, the project evolved from letting the land itself guide the creative process. Neighbour journeyed with the coracle across Eryri and onto Ynys Enlli, offering it as a contemplative space where audiences could engage with the landscape, experience the passage of time, and reconnect with their own sense of inner wildness.

The work resonates with rewilding principles by emphasizing humility, observation, and co-existence with natural processes. The coracle symbolizes both literal and metaphorical navigation through ecological and personal change, highlighting the importance of attuning to natural rhythms and reclaiming a sense of shared stewardship. By creating an intimate, tactile encounter with the land, “Finding Common Ground” encourages reflection on how humans can harmonize with ecosystems and participate actively in the restoration and care of wild spaces.

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