Through the work of four artists and their collaborations with communities, the project explores what it means to live within, move through and belong to places defined by boundaries.
The New Forest and Venice can both be understood as living museums — distinctive environments shaped over centuries by people, history, culture and careful stewardship. Both are places of extraordinary beauty and strong identity, but they also face complex contemporary pressures surrounding tourism, access, opportunity, changing populations, heritage and the environment.
The project began with Forest Bounds, working with communities across the New Forest to explore experiences of place, identity and belonging. Through conversations, workshops, research and creative activity, the artists worked alongside young people and community groups to uncover personal perspectives that can sometimes sit outside more familiar narratives of the forest.
These encounters became starting points for new artworks and ideas, exploring subjects including cultural diversity, personal journeys and wayfinding, age, ecology, memory and our relationship with the landscapes we inhabit.
The project is now Venice Bound.
The research, conversations, experiences and artworks generated in the New Forest have travelled to Venice, where they encounter another bounded landscape: an island city with its own histories, communities and environmental challenges. By bringing these ideas into a new international context, the artists are creating connections between the two places while asking how local experiences might contribute to wider conversations.
At its heart, In and Out of Bounds is about people and place. It asks whose stories are heard, how places change, what we choose to protect, and how art can create opportunities for different voices and experiences to be shared.
This exhibition at Venezia Kunst Depot brings those voices, questions and connections together — from the New Forest to Venice and back again.