Common Arts at the Fringe launches an arts festival inspired by Dorset dialect poet William Barnes (1801-1886) and his term “Soulzight”, exploring how memory and time inhabit the world. Curated by Aliceson Green, artists Zara McQueen, Rebecca Newnham, Fran Quinlan and Lizzie Sykes, present installations throughout the town reflecting landscape, community and the persistence of the past within the present.

Drawing on the Dorset dialect poem’s distinction between “eyezight” and “soulzight,” this body of work explores how meaning emerges through interpretation rather than observation alone. While “eyezight” describes what can be physically seen, “soulzight” suggests a deeper form of understanding shaped by memory, imagination, and lived experience. Across the installations, family histories, natural forms, and acts of observation become intertwined. 

Tokens by William Barnes (1867)

Green mwold on zummer bars do show
That they've a-dripped in winter wet;
The hoof-worn ring o' groun' below
The tree do tell o' storms or het;
The trees in rank along a ledge
Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge;
An' where the vurrow-marks do stripe
The down the wheat woonce rustled ripe.
Each mark ov things a-gone vrom view—
To eyezight's woone, to soulzight two.

The grass agean the mwoldren door
'S a token sad o' vo'k a-gone,
An' where the house, bwoth wall an' vloor,
'S a-lost, the well mid linger on.
What tokens, then, could Meary gi'e
That she a-lived, an' lived vor me,
But things a-done vor thought an' view?
Good things that nwone agean can do,
An' every work her love ha' wrought,
To eyezight's woone, but two to thought.

Like the traces described in Barnes’ poem—paths, wells, boundaries, and remnants embedded in the landscape—these works invite viewers to consider how one’s stories persist through fragments, gestures, and acts of care. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, they ask how personal and collective histories are continually reconstructed through the interplay of seeing, remembering, and imagining.

Chairs in Trees by Zara McQueen traces relationships across generations through chairs suspended in trees. Standing in for absent figures, the chairs connect family history with memory, inheritance and place, while playfully echoing the swings and playground equipment in St James's Park (9). An accompanying video exploring the chairs' relationship dynamics is screened at the Ye Olde Two Brewers (9) alongside the print Love Story. Meanwhile, the Library (5) features one of her photographic prints as a jigsaw puzzle alongside McQueen's Favourite Chair and her book Why This Chair?

Quercus Edition by Rebecca Newnham stands beside the oak tree in the Gold Hill Museum garden (2), reflecting on the continuity, history and inheritance of the oak. Quercus, the Latin name for oak, references the sculpture's direct relationship to the proportions of an oak leaf, which follow the Fibonacci sequence. The work also embodies the golden ratio and is finished with a glass skin developed from rubbings of oak bark.

Not A Cuckoo Clock, developed by Aliceson Green in collaboration with the family of the late Nick Crump, brings together his seahorn instrument and his recordings of local birdsong. The sculpture perched on the Town Hall balcony (1) serves as both memorial and gathering place, celebrating the beauty of birdsong and reminding us how those we have lost remain present in the landscapes and communities that we share.

In the windows of Eyestyle (4) and Harrold Opticians (3), Lizzie Sykes’ whirly video works Tiago’s Sequence & Maggi’s Sequence are being screened. Captured through an award winning spherical camera designed by the artist, these playful films invite the viewer to reflect on how we see and move in particular locations, how memory and vision guides our journeys, mediates perception, and shapes our understanding of the world. 

In The King's Arms (7), Fran Quinlan's drawings have evolved over an extended period, functioning as records of sustained attention. Layers of marks and revisions accumulate into dark, reflective surfaces that hold time within them. Their preliminary mono screen prints, inspired by traditional tailor's chalk, are displayed in the Dressmakers Studio (6) window. Between Sykes' and Quinlan's installations, the walk itself becomes part of the work, weaving the two locations together through movement, observation and the memories carried by each viewer.

Finally, William Barnes' poem Tokens will slowly appear across the Castle Hill railings (8). From 13–19 July, Aliceson Green will weave its words from bracken and plants foraged from the surrounding green spaces. The poem will reveal itself gradually, line by line, as far as time and materials allow. Visitors are invited to return throughout the week to witness its unfolding, and stop to chat with the artist.

Artists

Fran Quinlan      ‍https://www.instagram.com/fran.quinlan.artist

Practical research drives Fran’s reflective curiosity around the historical and contemporary reality of impermanence, making work that encompasses drawing, print, performance, sculpture, and installation. Her intensely embodied process driven drawing practice has a quiet ritualised character, exploring materiality and the transformative quality of paper. Meditative drawing processes are elemental to Fran to remain grounded with stillness and time, within the realm of perpetual motion. 

An Alumni and visiting tutor at Arts University Bournemouth, Fran develops, and regularly delivers workshops across various institutions and public settings.

Aliceson Green  https://www.aliceson.co.uk‍   ‍https://www.instagram.com/aliceson___

Green plays with documentary, archive and small moments that hint at a bigger picture, creating multimedia work that invites the viewer to drift, pause and reflect.

Local exhibitions include 1st Prize at the Dorset Open 2025,  People’s Choice Award (2017) and Highly Commended for the Hauser & Wirth Prize (2019) at Black Swan Open, Frome. Aliceson has undertaken residencies at home and abroad, and received various laurels from international film festivals. Green’s previously curated & co-curated exhibitions, this is her first time curating a festival. She studied BA and MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London (2009 & 2024).

Zara McQueen   ‍https://zara-mcqueen.co.uk   ‍https://www.instagram.com/zara_mcqueen

Zara, a founding member of Shaftesbury’s Cygnet Gallery, completed an MA in Fine Art at Arts University Bournemouth in 2023. She’s exhibited regularly including the RWA, Yeovil Art Space, Arts University Bournemouth, CAS Andover and Shaftesbury Arts Centre.

Zara's practice is conceptually rigorous and deeply rooted in lived experience. Drawing on Family Systems Theory and the genogram model, she uses sculpture, drawing, and installation to explore relational dynamics, memory, and social structures. Her ongoing chair-based work began as a studio encounter with found furniture, which has evolved into installation works and a limited-edition publication.

Rebecca Newnham   ‍https://rebeccanewnham.com‍   https://www.instagram.com/rebeccanewnhamsculptor

Rebecca Newnham is a sculptor working primarily in glass and bronze, and within her practice she draws on the natural environment. Her work is held in private collections worldwide, in Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in Cornwall, in The Himalayan Gardens and Sculpture Park in Yorkshire, in museum collections in Leicester, Northampton and the Midlands. 

This year, a 6m tall sculpture will be installed outside Royal Bournemouth Hospital and in September her work is included at the Royal West of England Academy. 

She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors and alumni of the Royal College of Art.

Lizzie Sykes    ‍https://vimeo.com/lizziesykes‍  https://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/lsykes    ‍                           

Lizzie Sykes is a film artist, artist-researcher and co-creational filmmaker, who lectures in moving image arts at Bournemouth University. Lizzie’s films are site inspired, responding to the way time passes in location, with dancers, sculptors and composers. Her screendance works have toured extensively internationally and nationally. She has shown work at Sadlers Wells and The Edinburgh Fringe and her work is held in the 'ReelDance' collection of University of New South Wales. In 2024 she completed her PhD entitled 'The Art of Screendance: revealing a site-centric methodology’. Lizzie is currently writing journal articles on co-creational arts practice and working on ongoing co-creational arts projects with Arts Disability Network.

Common                                    https://www.instagram.com/common_arts_

William Barnes Society       ‍  ‍https://williambarnessociety.org.uk

Flyer design by Joe Carter  ‍https://www.instagram.com/joec4rter‍ ‍https://joecarterstudio.co.uk/

Thanks to (in no particular order)…

All of our installation hosts / Shaftesbury Town Council / The Crump family / Blackmore printing / Tattie Bogle / Catherine Simmons / Hambledon Hotstep Band / Phil Elsworth - Town Cryer / Shaftesbury Fringe / Lidl / Arts University Bournemouth / Vale Tree Surgeons / Swans Trust / Hall & Woodhouse / The Eaton Fund