YSP presents an ambitious new body of work by Claye Bowler and unveils the artist’s largest outdoor sculpture to date

Press Story

Claye Bowler: Dig Me a Grave
4 October – 2 November 2025
Chapel and Outdoors

This autumn, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) presents an ambitious new body of work by Claye Bowler and unveils the artist’s largest outdoor sculpture to date, commissioned by YSP.

Dig Me a Grave is a solo exhibition by Claye Bowler, which explores graves and burial chambers as sites for introspection. Drawing from his own lived experiences of transness, queerness and disability, Bowler’s practice examines how these bodies navigate the world, often existing in spaces of waiting, whether for recognition, medical access, or societal acceptance. By reclaiming the imagery of graves as sites of rest rather than erasure, the artist considers universal themes of resilience, care, transformation, and mortality.

Shown in the meditative setting of YSP’s 18th century Chapel, Dig Me a Grave offers space for personal reflection, solace, and empathy. The exhibition includes sculptural works made in plaster, latex, stone and metal, some of which visitors are invited to physically interact with. Bowler hopes this will lead to a deeper sensory and personal engagement, and encourage allyship and reflection on shared human experiences.

Bowler says:“Yorkshire Sculpture Park has always meant a lot to me. I first moved to Yorkshire because of its strong ties to sculpture, and I kept coming back to YSP, through volunteering, working, and later for residencies and to exhibit. YSP and its land is a place that feels like home, which is a key theme to my exhibition Dig Me A Grave. The Chapel’s calm and still atmosphere really connects with the exhibition’s encouragement for visitors to pause, reflect, and contemplate land, loss, and rest. This show also coincides with my return to live in Yorkshire, so it’s especially meaningful to restart this chapter in a place that has shaped and supported my practice over the years.”

My Breath Smells Earthly Strong is a platform that visitors can lie on to rest, covering themselves with its shroud-like blanket made from latex and soil that creates a feeling of being held within the earth. Bowler’s work is inherently connected to land, taking inspiration from performance artists Rose English and Ana Mendieta, amongst others, who have explored their physicality through materials in the natural environment.

Running along the Chapel walls, Hole in the Ground Radiates Trans Joy is a horizontal line of plaster plaques cast from earth and retaining soil and pebbles within them. Each of over 30 soil samples was collected by trans people from a piece of land imbued with a happy memory for them. With this work, Bowler questions who land belongs to and how marginalised people can reclaim their relationship to it, gathering, embedding and archiving memories made in the landscape.

The artist has a deep connection to sound and music, increasingly integrating these elements into his practice. The exhibition title – Dig Me a Grave – takes its name from traditional British folk songs that draw on the themes of love, loss, death, and grief. He is interested in how oral history is passed on through time and the connection between queer history and folk music, both of which historically have little documentation. Accompanying the work is a newly developed soundscape created in collaboration with musician The Silver Field. The interplay between sound and sculpture brings the exhibition to life.

Extending the project into YSP’s landscape, during the course of the exhibition, Bowler will create a new stone work which will be his largest outdoor sculpture to date. The impression of his body lying in foetal position will be carved into the surface of the stone, intended to weather over time as it is joined by the presence of visitors who can lie within it. An evolving legacy of Dig Me a Grave, this sculpture will remain permanently at the Park.

Bowler’s association with YSP began when his powerful video work Not Much Further (2020) was featured in the group exhibition On Queer Ground in 2022. Then in 2024 he returned as the recipient of an Arts Rights Truth residency in association with the University of York. He has exhibited at the Henry Moore Institute, The Museum of Transology and Winter Sculpture Park, and his work is held in public collections including Arts Council Collection, Wellcome Collection, Otherness Archive, and Leeds Art Gallery. Bowler has also established platforms for the showcasing and support of other queer and trans artists, founding and directing Yonder Gallery (2019-22) and Yorkshire Trans Choir (2018-22).

Dig Me a Grave is a touring exhibition, shown at WIP’s Steamworks Gallery, London; Auction House, Cornwall, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield.

Supported by the Jerwood New Work Fund, Arts Council England and the Henry Moore Foundation.