Messums Wiltshire is a leading multi-purpose gallery and arts centre. It has become a platform for creative expression across artistic genre and a meeting point of minds to explore how art as a language is made, interpreted, resolved and shared.
Opened in Autumn 2016 after a two-year restoration project to bring a thirteenth century tithe barn, the largest thatched building in the country, back to life as an exhibition and event space. The gallery’s one year anniversary was marked with the opening of the Long Gallery, a former dairy that lies perpendicular to the main barn to present two-dimensional works of art and objects of scale as well as The Mess Restaurant. The exterior landscape was remodelled in 2020 with sculpture grounds and outside seating.
In 2020 we opened a Membership Programme to help support the ambitious artistic programming in Wiltshire, including international artist residencies, Contemporary Dance premiers and educational workshops. Messums Creative sees the act of physical making, often lacking in a digital world, brought back into focus via our Ceramic workshops, which have been running since Summer 2021.
Our Active Environmentalism programming, a series of talks from leading minds and thinkers, aims to inform our individual thinking around collective decisions. From better understanding nature at the seabed and upwards, to rationalising how a price can be put on environmental practices, the thinking at the intersection of science and necessity sits closely with the problem solving inherent in the creative process.
Underpinning all of this is an appreciation and respect for nature to which most artists and individuals will readily align and the prospect of innovation runs like creativity itself at the vanguard of our thoughts.
Messums Wiltshire is an independent business run by a team led by Johnathan Messum and maintains a number of galleries supporting the promotion of modern and contemporary arts, including Messums London on Cork Street.
