Although working in very different materials, both artists share an interest in landscape, memory, materiality and the hidden structures beneath the surfaces we encounter. Their practices are rooted in processes of making, construction and transformation, creating work that rewards close observation and reveals more with time.
For Victoria Fenn (above left), landscape is inseparable from memory and personal history. Her work explores her enduring connection to the Cambridgeshire Fens, where she was born and grew up and where her family has lived and worked the land for generations. The Fens are a landscape of contradictions: apparently open and exposed, yet concealing layers of history beneath the dark, fertile peat.
Fenn studied Three-dimensional Design, specialising in silversmithing and metalwork at Camberwell College of Arts, before pursuing a successful career as a garden designer. After moving from London to North Norfolk, eight years spent raising her three children and renovating a 17th-century farmhouse brought her back to making. Working with tools, construction materials and new skills became a catalyst for the return to her artistic practice.
The archaeological landscapes of Flag Fen and Must Farm are particularly significant to Fenn. Beneath today's intensively farmed fields lie remarkably preserved traces of earlier civilisations, including pottery, beads and metalwork. Objects deliberately deposited in the landscape thousands of years ago provide a powerful connection between the present and the distant past. Fenn's work draws on this sense of discovery, creating objects that suggest both permanence and the passage of time.
For Molly Thomson (above right), the act of painting is equally concerned with construction and transformation. Born in Perth, Scotland, and now living and working near Norwich, Thomson approaches each painting as an evolving object, repeatedly constructing, reconfiguring, applying, observing and reassessing until a balance is reached between painted surface and physical presence.
Her carefully considered fields of colour initially appear almost monochromatic, but closer inspection reveals a far more complex relationship between colour, surface and form. Working with surgical precision, Thomson alters the wooden panels themselves, cutting away corners, introducing curves, raising sections and exposing underlying layers of colour. The painting becomes simultaneously image, surface and object.
It is this dialogue between what is visible and what lies beneath that connects the two artists. Fenn looks beneath the surface of the Fenland landscape to uncover histories embedded in the earth, while Thomson physically opens up the surface of her paintings to reveal the layers within. Both artists transform materials through processes of excavation, construction, alteration and discovery.
Their work also shares an understanding that place carries memory. Whether embedded in ancient peat or concealed within layers of paint, traces of the past remain present. Through very different approaches, Fenn and Thomson invite viewers to look beyond the immediate surface—to slow down, look closely and consider how materials, landscapes and objects can hold stories of time, place and human experience.
Molly Thomson and Victoria Fenn will be exhibiting together in the Contemporary and Country Viewing Room at Woolmarket House, 6 St Nicholas Street, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, from 2–30 September 2027.
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About the author
Paul Vater
PAUL VATER
Paul conducts studio visits to maintain strong relationships with artists, designers and craftspeople who show their work with us. He manages the main C&C website and has developed the online shop where selected works are presented for sale.
Paul established his design company, Sugarfree, in 1990 and quickly gained a reputation for delivering fresh, effective marketing campaigns and brand identities for clients including Save the Children Fund, United Nations Association and UNHCR. Over the years those added to the roster include IPC Magazines, Arts Council England, The Roundhouse, Barbican Centre, Arts Marketing Association, Look Ahead Housing and Care, Paddington Waterside, BBC Worldwide, Commonwealth Foundation, Prestel, City of London Corporation, Baker Street Quarter, Victoria BID and the University of East Anglia.