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While visitors might view the landscapes in a warm sunny breeze, the visually
explosive, expressionist works portray each scene in diverse weather,
reflecting the wild winter days Garratt has spent on the island. “Weather
changes everything,” he says. “The light, the mood, the whole lot. It’s very
thought provoking to see several different skies in one painting.”
A painting by Anthony Garratt
To resist any unseasonal Atlantic blasts, the paintings – on marine plywood,
coated with UV varnish – sit on heavy-duty steel easels designed by
architects and built by shipwrights. Garratt, who intends this to be the
start of a trail of ‘in situ’ works throughout Britain, has also written a
musical score to accompany a film of their creation.
The outdoor displays are temporary additions to Tresco’s impressive art
collection, fuelled by the private passion of the island’s owner, Robert
Dorrien-Smith and wife, Lucy. As well as sculptures by Tom Leaper and David
Wynne, Tresco’s cottages and restaurants sport paintings by famous artists
with a link to the region from the late 19th and the 20th centuries,
including Graham Sutherland, Sir Terry Frost and Dame Laura Knight, along
with Ivon Hitchens, Dame Barbara Hepworth and Roger Hilton.
Skybus (0845 710 5555, islesofscilly-travel.co.uk)
flies to neighbouring St Mary’s from Land’s End and Newquay from £140
return, and from Exeter (March to October) from £255 return. Ferry to Tresco
costs £8.50 (01720 423999, scillyboating.co.uk).
Information (01720 422849, tresco.co.uk).
Stay at Sea Garden Cottages (01720 422849, tresco.co.uk)
where cottages sleeping six cost from £1,615 per week.
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Kielder Forest, Northumberland
Prepare to contemplate the vastness of the universe – and the gloriously
empty, untainted countryside of Northumberland — when you visit the latest
attraction in the county’s Kielder Water and Forest Park. The Star Gazing
pavilion, designed and built by architecture students at Newcastle
University, opened last month in a flower-filled meadow near Stonehaugh,
celebrating the area’s recent designation as an international dark sky park.
The skeletal wood circle, beautiful in its clean simplicity, is an easy drive,
or taxing hike, from the hugely enjoyable 27-mile trail of art and
architecture encircling Northern Europe’s largest man-made lake. The route’s
strange and wonderful creations, tucked into 250 square miles of forest near
the border with Scotland, include Minotaur, a linear maze of wire and rock
walls surrounding a room of glittering green glass beneath Kielder Castle.
You can also walk into the mouth and gaze out through the eyes of a giant
timber head, Silvas Capitalis (its creators claim you are entering the mind
of the forest’s silent observer). Or step inside Belvedere, a stainless
steel shelter resembling an alien in a 1950s sci-fi movie, which reflects
its surroundings in constantly changing weather. Or enter the Wave Chamber,
a beehive shaped, dry stone camera obscura. It makes visitors feel they’re
standing on rippling liquid by projecting images of the lake onto the floor.
Art in Kielder Forest
On more solid ground, walkers can rest in the Janus Chairs, three super sized
rotating steel and wood seats resembling opening flower petals, before
visiting the Salmon Cubes, a series of sculptures inspired by the River
Tyne’s tastiest fish. Many families head to Bull Crag Peninsula in the south
of the lake where a trail of bronze rubbing plaques is dotted along a
two-mile loop.
Alternatively, taking inspiration from the new star gazing pavilion, visitors’
eyes can stay firmly anchored on the heavens. The famous observatory, a
couple of miles from the lake’s north tip, sits next to Cat Cairn, where
internationally renowned artist, James Turrell, manipulates our perceptions
of light and space in a partially buried circular room, with a ceiling hole
open to the sky and passing clouds.
Entry free, parking £4 per day (0845 155 0236, kielderartandarchitecture.com).
Stay in one of the superbly equipped Scandinavian style lodges at Leaplish
Waterside Park (01434 251000, visitkielder.com)
where a four-person cabin costs from £379 per week, £265 for a three-night
weekend.
The star gazing pavillion at Stonehaugh in The Keilder Forest
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Nr Wakefield
This is your chance to witness the return of a global star. The current
exhibition of works by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, his first in a
British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern in 2010,
occupies the courtyard and interior of the Park’s newly renovated chapel.
Iron Tree, a striking six-metre tall outdoor work, interlocks 99 iron casts of
branches, roots and trunks from different trees with an exaggerated Chinese
engineering technique of prominent nuts and bolts. The sculpture is intended
to rust over time as a powerful symbol of the cycle of nature.
Ai Weiwei, who is banned from travel outside China so worked from photographs
and architectural plans of the 18th century chapel, is also exhibiting four
pieces indoors reflecting on freedom and the individual in society. They
include a marble lantern – a nod to the red lanterns with which he has
decorated state surveillance cameras outside his home, and will be
accompanied by readings from works by his father, the poet Ai Qing.
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The 500-acres of fields, hills and woodland, interspersed with lakes and
formal gardens, that link Wakefield and Barnsley, are also the stage for the
first large scale European exhibition by acclaimed American artist, Ursula
von Rydingsvard. Over forty of her drawings and sculptures, most forged from
her trademark cedar beams, are exhibited in the underground gallery and
outdoors, including Bowl with Lace, currently greeting visitors at the park
entrance, a new six-metre high bronze cast, crowned with filigree and lit
from within to suggest a glowing ember.
This summer also sees the opening of a monumental sculpture, Large Owl, by
California-based Thomas Houseago. The massive bronze head on a redwood
plinth, echoing the symbol of his birthplace, Leeds, joins the outstanding
display at Europe’s largest sculpture park, which has recently been named
Art Fund Museum of the Year.
Entry free, parking: from £5 for two hours, all-day £8. Open daily 10am –
6pm (01924 832631, www.ysp.co.uk).
Stay in The Three Acres (01484 602606, 3acres.com),
a turn of the century drover’s inn with decent food and BB
doubles from £125.
Cass Sculpture Foundation, West Sussex
It’s unlike any bathroom you’ve seen before. Contemporary artist Gary Webb has
playfully blended aluminium and bronze with car paint and lacquer to create
an eye-popping multicoloured installation of fixtures, fittings and soaps,
potions and lotions. As the Cass Sculpture Foundation’s latest commission,
Dreamy Bathroom makes a striking addition to the collection of works
sprinkled across 26 acres of gloriously verdant, rolling woodland in the
heart of the South Downs National Park.
Eva Rothschild’s ‘Nature And Culture’
Webb’s highly photogenic creation isn’t the only new feature in the
Foundation’s chunk of West Sussex countryside. It is joined by
Brazilian-American artist, Juliana Cerqueira Leile’s high impact, tactile
Climb, a loaned abstract work of foam and steel. Also on temporary display
is the mesmerizing Nature and Culture by Irish-born Eva Rothschild, whose
sculptures have graced Tate Britain — a huge tangled yet linear web of black
aluminium which plays with visual perceptions. Michael Joo’s Doppelganger,
another loan, is a dazzling zebra, ears aloft, head turned and dripping with
pink enamel paint; it’s cast in bronze from the mould of an earlier
sculpture, based on a painting by George Stubbs.
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This summer you can also see Thomas Heatherwick’s recently restored 20th
century folly, Pavilion. Working as a building, a piece of furniture and a
sculpture, with a roof modeled on a derelict farm shed that twists down into
translucent walls, it was previously displayed to dramatic effect next to
Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. It sits alongside other highly acclaimed
sculptures including works by Tony Cragg, Danny Lane, Bill Woodrow and Diane
Maclean.
Entry: Adults £12.50, Children £6.50; open daily 10.30am – 4.30pm (01243
538449, sculpture.org.uk).
Stay in The Star and Garter (01243 811318, thestarandgarter.co.uk),
an 18th century flint and brick pub with BB doubles for £120
More contemporary sculpture in spectacular locations
Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, Gloucestershire
This 4.5-mile trail through towering oaks and pines has 22 works inspired by
the trees, wildlife and industrial past of the forest (forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk).
New Art Centre, Wiltshire
A sculpture park, gallery and educational centre set in the grounds of an
early 19th century house with indoor and outdoor exhibits (sculpture.uk.com).
Grizedale Forest, Cumbria
Over 30 years the forest has become home to 50 permanently sited works from
giant keys to super sized ferns and a concrete country stile (grizedalesculpture.org).
National Botanic Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire
Works by some of Wales’ leading contemporary sculptors are dotted around a
slice of the 568 acres of parkland that contain the historic walled garden
and Norman Foster’s futuristic Great Glasshouse (gardenofwales.org.uk).
Burghley House, Lincolnshire
The gorgeous Capability Brown designed grounds here include a sculpture park
where permanent exhibits mingle with April-to-October exhibitions. Currently
on show are works that respond to the elements, including delicate kinetic
sculptures that appear and vanish in the breeze (burghley.co.uk).
Michael Joo’s ‘Doppelganger’, at the Cass Sculpture Foundation
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