Exhibitions and reviews

BBC News reports that wool artist Nicola Turner, whose work was seen in Wuthering Heights 2026, is going to have her installations on display at Yorkshire Sculpture Park..

A woollen sculpture created by an artist whose installations feature in the latest Wuthering Heights film is to go on display at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Time's Scythe, a "site-responsive installation" by artist Nicola Turner, uses wool from the British Wool Board in Bradford and will be on display from Saturday.

Turner is putting the finishing touches to the work, which will see an 18th-Century chapel at the Wakefield park covered in wool and horsehair.

She said she was inspired by the landscape and "energy" of the chapel and its rural surroundings.

"My material, which includes locally sourced wool, will pull, weave and grasp through the space with the final form emerging as I work in situ with the YSP team," she said. [...]

Turner's works appear in the Emerald Fennell version of Wuthering Heights, which stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi and was released in February.

Her large woollen sculptures hang from the walls and roofs of Wuthering Heights, the moorland house in which Cathy and Heathcliffe [sic] are raised. (Grace Wood)

More local exhibitions as The Telegraph and Argus features a series of Brontë portraits by John Ellis.

A series of portraits of the Brontës and people connected to them have gone on display in Thornton, to raise funds for the chapel where Patrick Brontë was a young curate.

The paintings, by John Ellis, were initially displayed in the Brontë Birthplace, which opened last year as a visitor centre and education hub. The Market Street property, where the Brontë siblings were born, was opened by Queen Camilla last May.

Says John: “In 2024 I and my late partner, Susan, and I were given a task to paint and draw a total of 34 pictures for the Brontë house in Thornton.

During the period of 12 months it took to produce the pictures, I lost Susan to a heart attack two thirds of the way through the year. After the funeral I carried on and finished all the pictures for the opening day and the visit of the Queen.”

Now John is exhibiting the portraits at St James’ Church in Thornton. The launch event included a raffle and sales of The Birthplace of Dreams, a book about the Brontë Birthplace by photographer and historian Mark Davis, to raise funds for the church and Thornton’s Bell Chapel. The exhibition is on for two weeks and has already raised more than £100.

“I have always loved drawing and painting, and clay modelling. I love to create things,” says John. “Art was my best subject at school. At 15 I left school to work at English Electric as an apprentice toolmaker then I was in the RAF for five years, during which my artist talents were used quite a lot. When I came out I went back into toolmaking.

“I met Susan in 2005 when I moved to Thornton; it was then that I started to take to my brushes again, doing commissions for family and friends. When we both retired we took it up much more - Susan with her drawings, she was really talented.

“At the beginning of 2024 I was painting the Brontë pillar painting when we saw an advert on Facebook about open day at the Brontë house in Thornton, so decided to go and see what it was all about.

“On arriving we were given a lecture about the house, then Christa Ackroyd (the broadcaster campaigned for crowdfunding for the Brontë Birthplace renovation) asked if we had anything to donate for furnishing the house. That’s when Sue nudged me in the ribs and said ‘Donate the painting you’re doing’.

So we showed Christa a photo of what I was doing and she asked me to do some more, to tell the story of how the Brontë family ended up on Market Street.

“Between us both, Sue and I did 34 paintings and drawings. I made the decision to keep the style of Bramwell Brontë, from the pillar painting, to give an air of the period we were talking about, plus the old fashioned style blended in with the house itself.

“I have painted all the family, but only Elizabeth and little Maria, the two older Brontë siblings, are on the painting of the house.

I have also put my little quirk on the paintings - a ladybird somewhere in the paintings and one on the back of the canvas.” [...]

As well as painting the family, John has created a portrait of Nancy De Garrs, who was 13 when the Brontës employed her as the children’s nanny in Thornton. Nancy outlived the Brontës and died, age 82, in Bradford Workhouse. (Emma Clayton)

Keighley News reports that the Old School Room has been granted a licence for the venue to serve alcohol between 9am and 11pm and host live music.

And more reviews of Wuthering Heights 2026:

From The Montclarion:

I left Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” feeling nothing. It was a visually pretty movie with unconventional costumes and two attractive leads, but it did not address race, class and gender roles the way the novel masterfully does.

Fennell stripped away what made the book so compelling and instead created pallid fanfiction. The fact that many others feel the same goes to show that we want stories to meaningfully engage with us.

Despite my negative feelings toward Fennell’s adaptation, the movie left me with hope. This decade has brought notable movie adaptations of classic novels — Emma, the Dune series, and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”, to name a few.

“Wuthering Heights” reminds audiences what made those previous adaptations successful. The directors kept the essence of the novel while adding a few authentic touches. Fennell’s failure to do this sets a higher standard for adaptations of classics that online discourse has made loud and clear: Get the themes right. (Paula Milian)

Community Reporter:

Emerald Fennell’s unhinged version of “Wuthering Heights” is surely to be divisive. There’s a reason why the film’s poster displays the title in quotation marks. Those who are loyal to the novel might be jarred by the composition of this rendition, while casual movie watchers might be enthralled by the overall spectacle. What’s certain is that this is a dark, tragic and overwhelming experience. Amidst the highly stylized presentation is a story of dangerous and toxic love that envelops everything around it. I found it haunting me for days after I saw it. (Zach Murphy)

The Bates Student:

Perhaps, to avoid losing the meaning in adaptations, we might expand our definition from one of fidelity to one that includes artistic license. Those who are inspired by a work of art and set out to adapt it to a different medium or reimagine it in a new context have the discretion and freedom over what they produce. That’s the beauty of inspiration. However, I do also argue that it is necessary for creatives to be intentional about why portions of this story are appealing to them and what they are adapting. Purposefully cutting around central themes to the original almost defeats the purpose of adapting it (unless perhaps the changes help subvert and critically comment on the source material).

The original and adaptation can then be viewed as companion pieces, but that doesn’t mean that critical thinking stops outside the metaphorical door of the source material. Some people will definitely be watching this movie without the lens of the original. Saying the adaptation was bad doesn’t get to the deeper parts of the movie where the choices of creative liberty become under scrutiny as well.

The new work can be judged both alongside and outside the original work. This form of the adaptation, created with intentionality, becomes a way to let the story resonate with another person or different audience. It’s just important to realize which parts are resonating.

“Wuthering Heights” (2026) takes advantage of the aesthetics and narrative of the Gothic novel to market a highly romanticized and unconvincing tragic romance between two characters who are shadows of their literary counterparts. Irrelevant to the novel, this movie still leaves much to be desired emotionally and narratively. Much like its dreamy finish, the movie glosses over the themes of obsession, possession, and even the humiliation, pleasure, and pain found in sadomasochism and erratically jumps to a sudden erotic tone. At the end of it all you’re left with an empty and unsettled feeling, which is surprisingly close to how the book leaves you.

This film will no doubt be the introduction of many to Brontë’s story, maybe even inspiring some to pick up the physical book since they loved this movie so much. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Reading is good! But, after you see this movie or any of the many adaptations in theaters this year, expand your analysis to criticize both the adaptation and whether the resulting work is compelling in its own right. (Hadley Blodgett)

Razón + Fe (Colombia) considers the film is an 'absolute treason' to the original novel and that the 'deep Christian theme' of the novel is missing from the adaptation. A contributor to Her Campus also thinks that '“Wuthering Heights” is not actually Wuthering Heights'.

The Yorkshire Post features Haworth-based maker Rosalia Ferrara, who creates Brontë-inspired products and gave Emerald Fennell one of her tote bags. Historic UK looks at the possible inspiration behind Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The Meaford Independent features the novel. Far Out Magazine has an article on the filming location of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights music video:

If you want to recreate the video accurately, you’ve got to get down to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, which is where you can also find Stonehenge; that’s two bits of history for the price of one. Specifically, an area called Baden’s Clump near the Sidbury Hill area of the chalk plateau was the very spot that Bush floated about like a possessed Cathy, pretending to be up in the wily, windy moors. (Aimee Ferrier)