“I’m a huge champion of creativity – it’s the great unifier”
— Bethan Maddocks
Bethan Maddocks is an artist who works with archives, communities and organisations to collect stories and make socially engaged, site-specific artwork.
Often working with light, paper, fabric and found objects she creates interactive, tactile sculpture and installations. Narratives gathered through conversation and collaborative making are constructed into playful, transformative artwork.
She works regularly with BALTIC centre of contemporary art, Museums Northumberland and various National Trust properties. She was shortlisted for the Culture Awards Artist of the Year 2022, is the 2019 winner of The Dover Prize, as well as winner of The Culture Award for Museum of the year 2019, for The Fallen Forest.
You can read interviews with Bethan here:
Culture Vulture: Artist Interview, Living North: Meet the Artist and Living North: Dark Skies Park
Artworks
The Birds, the Bees and the Blossom, Seaton Deleval Hall, 2025
Noctalgia, Northumberland National Park, 2024
The Caretakers, Chatsworth House, 2023
Quiet Space, Seaton Deleval Hall, 2025
Pollinators, Darts, 2024
Of the Sea and Of the Sky, Berwick Museum and Art Gallery, 2022
Seventy, South Shields District Hospital, 2019
Fallen Forest, Woodhorn Museum, 2018 - 2019
Floraphone, Woodhorn Museum, 2019
Collaboration
Flight, Brewary Arts, 2022
The Quest of Missing Questions, Woodhorn Museum, 2020
Christmas Carol, Literary and Philosophical society, Newcastle, 2019
Frost of Forgetfulness, Woodhorn Museum, 2016
Everything There Ever Was, Crimdon Dene, 2018
Workshops
Dark Skies- Noctalgia, Northumberland National Park 2023-24
BALTIC, Freelance Arts team, 2007 - present
NHS & Age Concern, South Tyneside
Creative Age, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Equal Arts
Homing, Ashington Northumberland
Museums Northumberland, Woodhorn Museum, Berwick Museum, Morpeth Bagpipe Chantry and Hexham Old Gaol
Residencies
Connections Through Culture, Sabah Borneo, 2024
Testing Ground, Yorkshire Art Space, 2023
Chatsworth House, 2023
Studio Garonne, France, 2019
Borneo Bengkal, Borneo and North England, 2018
Selected Artworks
Noctalgia
Commissioned by Northumberland National Park, 2023
Commissioned as part of Northumberland National Parks 10th anniversary as a International Dark Skies Park, Noctalgia celebrated the night sky and the changing relationship to darkness.
Noctalgia is a new term invented by astronomers Aparna Venkatesan and John Barentine to describe the pain associated with losing access to the night sky due to light pollution: "noctalgia," meaning "sky grief."
Referencing an Orrery, a mechanical model that maps the movements of stars, planets and moons, the kenetic light sculptures explored Northumbria’s ecology and celestial connections.
Floraphone
Woodhorn Museum 2019
Commissioned by Woodhorn Museum “The Floraphone” was a site specific, interactive work combining moving sculpture, horticulture and sound, to playfully explore the internal life of plants.
Exhibited alongside Matt Stokes’ The Sound Mirror, it took inspiration from his research into the story of an orchid grown and named in honour of footballing legend Jackie Milburn.
The work featured sound design by Nick John William, and textiles elements created in collaboration with Catriona Maddocks and Amber Zamani-Esskeli.
The Caretakers
Chatsworth House, 2023
Two large scale papercuts commissioned for Christmas at Chatsworth: Palace of Advent.
The Caretakers was installed in the Chapel Corridor and responded to the historic houses’ art collection whilst simultaneously telling stories of the workers from the Estate; Chatsworth's caretakers.