Research Art Lab is inspired by the creative spirit of invention that took place on Orford Ness in the twentieth century. Throughout the 2025 season, eleven artists are using this building as a temporary studio laboratory to experiment and test new ways of working based on active research around Orford Ness.

The artists work in a range of media including drawing, sculpture, painting, installation, film, photography, text and performance. Their activities draw on archival sources and field research such as: early camouflage techniques and colour palettes from World War I that were tested on the Ness; contemporary botanical drawings and coded compositions from commonly flora found on the shingle and marshland; drawings and contact photographic prints made from recording trajectories of found materials.

The Research Art Lab programme activates the Power House into a live working creative space, making public the process of developing and testing work that often takes place behind closed doors. Here you can see the process of creative research and experimentation as it happens rather than as a finished outcome.

Each of the Research Art Laboratory artists draws on the legacy of the Ness, its Research Laboratories and as a site for experimentation and improvisation. Instead of experiments into defence and destructive forces, we hope that the artists will prompt new ways for us to look at, question and understand the heritage, shifting landscape and ecology around us.

Research Art Lab is part of the Power House project, a long-term creative art lab led by University of Suffolk researchers and artists Jane Watt and SE Barnet in collaboration with the National Trust Orford Ness.