Turning Light
A seasonal exhibition programme at Isca, Borde Hill
Curated by The Violet Hour

At The Violet Hour, we conceived Turning Light as a living, unfolding exhibition—one that moves in step with the natural rhythms of Borde Hill. Structured around the shifting light of the equinoxes and solstices, the programme brings together artists whose practices are deeply attuned to transformation, seasonality, and the quiet forces that shape our experience of landscape over time.

Presented at their new restaurant, Isca — where food, place, and atmosphere are inseparable—Turning Light evolves across the year. Each chapter introduces a distinct sensibility while remaining rooted in a shared attentiveness to the natural world. Rather than a static display, it is an invitation to return: an ongoing dialogue between art, environment, and the passage of time.

Our approach to curating is grounded in context. Through Turning Light, we continue our commitment to placing contemporary art in direct conversation with lived environments. Working across exhibitions, collections, and collaborative partnerships, we support artists in presenting work beyond conventional gallery settings—creating encounters that are both intimate and expansive, and that unfold gradually rather than all at once.

Part I: Emergence into Abundance (May – October 2026) traces the movement from the tentative energies of spring into the fullness of summer. It is a season defined by growth, expansion, and heightened sensory awareness—where colour intensifies, forms unfurl, and the landscape comes fully into itself.

The artists in this first chapter approach these ideas through distinct yet resonant practices.

Georgia Beaumont’s paintings celebrate the vitality and strangeness of botanical life. Her jewel-like surfaces and curling floral forms hover between observation and invention, capturing not only the structure of plants but their expressive, almost animate energy. Rooted in the English countryside yet shaped by memory and intuition, her work reflects the exuberance of the season—where growth feels both ordered and unruly, familiar yet constantly renewing.

Beatrice Hasell-McCosh begins with close observation, returning repeatedly to the same landscapes, yet her paintings move beyond representation into something more fluid and immersive. Forms dissolve and reassemble, guided by sensation and memory rather than fixed perspective. Her richly layered surfaces evoke the density of summer growth—the press of foliage, the rhythm of expansion and entanglement—capturing the feeling of being בתוך a landscape at its most abundant.

Katherine Jones RA brings a complementary sense of structure, combining printmaking and painting to create intricate, symbolic compositions. Drawing on folkloric and literary traditions, she works with archetypal forms—flowers, houses, trees—to explore attraction, display, and transformation. Within Turning Light, her work echoes the subtle dramas of the natural world: how plants signal, seduce, and compete, mirroring human gestures of adornment and desire.

Felicity Warbrick’s practice is grounded in memory, landscape, and trace. Working across woodcut, drawing, and print, she explores how places are shaped not only by natural forces but by human presence and imagination. Her works often feel like fragments of stories—quiet, slightly uncanny, and deeply rooted in specific terrains. Here, they offer a counterpoint to immediacy, reflecting instead on continuity, return, and the accumulation of meaning over time.

Together, these artists create a layered, responsive environment within Isca—one that mirrors the experience of Borde Hill itself. Works are encountered not as isolated objects, but as part of a wider sensory field, in dialogue with light, movement, and the rhythms of the space.

With Turning Light, we position Borde Hill not simply as a setting for art, but as an active participant. As the seasons shift, so too does the exhibition—introducing new works, atmospheres, and ways of seeing. Each phase offers a renewed invitation: to pause, to look closely, and to attune to the subtle transformations that shape both landscape and perception.