A display of small cardboard shapes displayed on wires around a plaster block with a human form cut into the centre.
Plan your visit

Claye Bowler: Dig Me a Grave

– Chapel

About Claye Bowler: Dig Me a Grave

Visitors to YSP this autumn should head to the historic 18th century chapel to experience new work by Claye Bowler. Located a short walk from the Visitor Centre, it is the perfect pitstop when journeying across the Country Park.

Dig Me a Grave by Bowler explores graves and burial chambers as sites for introspection, and uses them as a way to open up conversations about how we process death and how we navigate living in its wake.

Drawing from lived experience of transness, queerness and disability, Bowler reflects on universal themes of waiting, transformation and mortality. Sculptures made in plaster, latex, stone and metal, some of which visitors are invited to sit or lie within, will be accompanied by a soundscape inspired by traditional folk songs with themes relating to love and loss.

Visitors may remember the artist’s video in YSP’s group exhibition On Queer Ground in 2022.

In 2024 Bowler spent time on site as a recipient of an Arts Right Truth Residency with the University of York and YSP.

Supported by the Jerwood New Work Fund.

Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

  • A person lying on the ground between two large boulders outdoors.
  • A display of small cardboard shapes displayed on wires around a plaster block with a human form cut into the centre.

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