Goodwood Art Foundation: Rachel Whiteread proves simplicity is best

Telegraph

29-05-2025

Few things at Goodwood are muted. On this 12,000-acre estate, crowned by that sprawling country house, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon hosts shooting parties, a high-speed hillclimb and a classic-car festival. But seek out, in a corner of his domain, the new Art Foundation, which opens this weekend, and you'll be met by serenity. Glad of it, as well: the selection of contemporary art on display – 14 works, or groups thereof – thrives in these 70 acres of ancient trees and winding paths.
The Foundation has two small galleries; a third is in the works. In the larger space is the inaugural headline act: Rachel Whiteread, represented indoors by two sculptural installations and, rare thing, a selection of photographs. Few British artists make work as consistently high-calibre. Whiteread's ability to give form and shape to the traces we leave behind, the absences that build our worlds, hasn't palled since she won the Turner Prize with House in 1993.
In the Gallery, she presents Doppelgänger (2020-1), a shed assembled from found materials then painted a uniform white; and Bergamo III (2023), materialisations of the space beneath chairs and stools, cut from north-Italian stone. These pieces hint at struggle and loss – the latter in particular, given Bergamo's experience in the Covid-19 pandemic – but their meaning remains, in Whiteread's familiar way, so beautifully elusive: not quite romantic, not quite sad. Occasionally, she verges on funny. Of all the works at Goodwood, the Instagram star will be one of her outdoor offerings, Down and Up (2024-5), a pair of staircases heading to nowhere, placed at a meadow's edge.
The leading role may be Whiteread's, but look for two gems by Veronica Ryan: a pair of bronzes, which give us magnolias in one case as a pod, and in the other as heads in bloom. The subtlety of the metalwork, the fineness of the hues: Ryan's craftsmanship stops you dead. Most of the pieces you encounter here are of comparable quality. That said, small exhibitions expose any weaknesses, and Goodwood has a few. Rose Wylie's pineapple-like sculptures try to be bobbled and daffy while also retaining an edge – exotic fruit means colonial imports; one looks a bit like a bomb – but they don't get the balance right. Isamu Noguchi's geometric stack isn't one of his more interesting works.
Still, as at Yorkshire Sculpture Park or Hauser & Wirth's Somerset branch, it's a pleasure not to be jammed in a heaving urban gallery: to wander down woodchip walks and quiet glades, and see art in the open air. Best of all, you don't need a smartphone: just pick up a handsome printed map, less a leaflet than a brochure. (Or even do without one, although the sign by each work omits to name its materials, which most people like to know.) You could call some of these pieces, undemonstrative forms in a natural setting, straightforward – even 'simple', as the Foundation calls its grounds. If so, fine: simplicity can be rich. Whiteread's art is proof of that.