In this episode, Danielle travels to the sweeping grounds of Wolterton, an 18th-century Palladian Hall in Norfolk, where centuries of history and years of careful restoration have set the stage for a bold new chapter in contemporary art. The Arts & Culture Programme at Wolterton launched this summer with Sea State, an exhibition co-curated by Simon Oldfield and Gemma Rolls-Bentley, featuring two extraordinary artists whose practices are deeply tied to the natural world: Maggi Hambling and Ro Robertson.

For Hambling, the sea has always been both muse and adversary – unpredictable, overpowering, and endlessly alive. Here, she unveils new works, including Time, an intimate installation honouring her late partner Tory Lawrence, and her ongoing Wall of Water series, paintings that crash with the force and emotion of the waves themselves. As well as her relationship to the sea, she talks about how her painting process relates to her grief and the passing of time. 

Alongside Hambling, Robertson’s site-specific sculpture The Swell rises in Wolterton’s Marble Hall – a fluid, steel form rooted in nature’s cycles and the artist’s own connection to the queer body in the landscape.

Together, their works transform this historic house into a space of reflection, grief, power, and renewal – inviting us to confront our place within the vastness of the natural world. Both discuss the sea as both subject and metaphor, about love and loss, queerness and sexual desire, identity and memory, and how Wolterton’s history has become a showcase for these ideas.