Dartmoor art exhibit to highlight 'urgent issues'

Film, photography and land art from Dartmoor are set to feature among the displays

Artworks inspired by Dartmoor will be the focus of a four-month exhibition at a Devon museum.

Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) is hosting the show called Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape from 19 October until 23 February.

Film, photography and land art - which use natural materials to make art in the landscape - would be on display along with two works from Alex Hartley and Ashish Ghadiali commissioned by RAMM for the exhibit, organisers said.

Lara Goodband, RAMM's contemporary art curator, said she hoped the exhibition would bring "urgent issues" involving Dartmoor to wider attention.

'Stimulate debate and creativity'

Ms Goodband said the national park had become synonymous recently with the wild camping legal battles involving it.

In July 2023, the National Park Authority successfully appealed a High Court ruling made six months earlier which gave Dartmoor landowners the right to remove people camping in the wild.

The Court of Appeal said wild camping could be classed as an open-air recreation, which is allowed in the park under the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985.

Alexander Darwall - who owns a 4,000 acres (16 sq km) estate on Dartmoor and brought the original case to court - won the right to appeal the decision at the Supreme Court, with the next hearing beginning on Tuesday.

Ms Goodband said: "My hope is that this exhibition’s attention to urgent issues will bring renewed re-focus to this 'wild' place, a landscape that stimulates debate and continues to inspire creativity."