Twenty people, a soundtrack of working West Wight and more than 100 shared memories arrive at Dimbola Museum and Galleries this autumn.
West Wight: Portraits of a Landscape opens at the Freshwater Bay venue on 5th September and stays until 31st December 2026.
The project pulls photographs, sounds and stories into one live, multisensory show about the people who make their lives in the west of the Island.
Dimbola once belonged to the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, which makes it a fitting home for a show built on portraits.
Twenty portraits, twenty working lives
Photographer Pete Johnstone spent time with 20 fascinating people who live and work across West Wight, each of them holding a strong connection to the land or the sea.
Those portraits form the backbone of the exhibition.
Listen as well as look
Nathan Holt took a different route into the same landscape, recording the everyday sounds most of us walk straight past.
His microphones caught milking cows, bees inside their hives, bellringing, charcoal making, an artist painting, planters digging and a poetry reading.
Those recordings build an evocative soundscape that runs alongside the photographs, so visitors hear West Wight as well as see it.
Children, and a hundred-odd voices
Janet Owen worked with young learners across West Wight on the idea of sensory landscapes.
She also collated mini-stories at a run of pop-up events, where more than 100 people talked about what ties them to this corner of the Island.
A digital map and a lesson for everyone
The team continue to build a digital map of the portraits.
Alongside it sits a new schools learning resource, Portraits of Your Landscape, which lives on EarthMuseum Learn and opens the idea up to students anywhere.
Plan your visit
West Wight: Portraits of a Landscape runs at Dimbola Museum and Galleries from 5th September to 31st December 2026.
Normal admission prices apply.
