5 August – 25 September

As part of our season exploring the material of paper, this exhibition presents the work of four female artists – Becky Allen, Purdey Fitzherbert, Alice von Maltzahn and Emilie Pugh showcasing the diversity of paper as a material. While the practices of these artists vary in their nature and approach, there is a shared affinity in the work and their relationship with the material.

5 August – 18 September 2023

From 5 August, our in-depth focus on materials investigates paper. Japanese textile artist Kaori Kato will take over the barn gallery with a site-specific installation. Kato creates geometric patterns and organic forms by hand-folding paper. As artist-in-residence for a short period at Messums Wiltshire, she will be making work on site as she responds to the interior of the thirteenth-century tithe barn. Her paper sculpture will dynamically integrate with the space with works suspended from the ceiling, unfolding from the floor, rhythmically rolling over plinths and curling over the walls.

14 July – 31 August 2023

“These works on paper are fragments of landscapes made of light and coarse salt, a point of view on the landscape that evokes the gaze of an eighteenth-century traveller; to return to know how to look at that landscape enjoying its richness.” Francesco Poiana

from 14 July 2023

Activating the lawns and landscape surrounding the barn and drawing inspiration from our summer Festival of Dance, Messums Wiltshire presents Larger Than Life, a group exhibition of sculpture by gallery and invited artists. From Laurence Edwards’ six-foot bronze Chthonic Head, fresh from the shores of Lowestoft where it washes up for this year’s First Light Festival in June, to Sophie Ryder’s Dancing Ladies and Helaine Blumenfeld’s pivotal Souls, created in 1985 following her breakthrough exhibition with Henry Moore, the show renders the body as engine of movement in metal and stone.

17th June – 31 July 2023

“These works on paper are fragments of landscapes made of light and coarse salt, a point of view on the landscape that evokes the gaze of an eighteenth-century traveller; to return to know how to look at that landscape enjoying its richness.” Francesco Poiana

17 June – 31 July 2023

McCrum’s practice is a potent fusion of the ancient with the modern. She works primarily in stone, from which some pieces are also cast in bronze. Initially influenced by archaeological finds and by the work of Brancusi, Hepworth and Moore, her sculpture also contains oblique references to the landscape and fauna around her homes in Devon and Gozo.

6 May – 12 June

This exhibition presents selected works by artists from, or inspired by, Australia and New Zealand, in celebration of our season focused on Antipodean culture and heritage. The collection of work is diverse while the artists are connected by their emotional and psychological engagement with the Australasian landscape and outback topography. It is this deeply-rooted commitment to a sense of place that enlivens their imagination and fuels their practice – the landscape consciously or unconsciously entering their work and, ultimately, their values.

6 May – 8 July

The Hidden is a sound and film installation by Australian filmmaker and artist Tim Georgeson and composer, performer and proud Kalkadunga man, William Barton. It offers a personal account of the Bundanon land and waterscapes in New South Wales, Australia.

6 May – 11 June 2023

Australia has significantly impacted the work of British sculptor Laurence Edwards. This influence is particularly evidenced in his monumental 6ft sculpture ‘After the Flood’. The original title of this work was ‘The Catcher’ but its meaning altered following the sculptor’s visit to Australia in 2018 and the presentation of the work in Sydney and Melbourne where it received a powerful response from Australian audiences.

3 April – 31 May 2023

In the letters that Van Gogh sent to his brother he often made a sort of synthesis of the work done. A small thumbnail drawing was drawn on the bottom of the page to share with his brother the work in progress of the painting.

4 March – 30 April 2023

In conjunction with Thiébaut Chagué’s installation of a wood-fired kiln at Messums Wiltshire and the exhibition of his work, we will be displaying a presentation of sculptural ceramics by the contemporary French artist, Sandrine Bringard. Bringard was taught by Chagué and spent a year in residence working at his studio, experimenting with high- temperature wood-firing and learning from his expertise.

4 March – 30 April 2023

Thiébaut Chagué began his career in 1976, training in France, Belgium and in England under Michael Cardew and Richard Batterham. Returning to France in 1981 he set up his first workshop in the Loire Valley and in 1984 built a new studio in the Vosges with a wood-fired kiln.

4 March – 30 April 2023

This exhibition of abstract ceramic work has been selected by Martin Smith and will be on display in Wiltshire in conjunction with Smith’s solo show at Messums London. The exhibition will feature work by Natasha Daintry, Nicholas Lee, Alison Rees and James Rigler. All of the participating artists have been taught by Smith at the Royal College of Art, and all share an affinity with his work.

18 February – 31 March by appointment only

Approximately 30 works by the artist Brian Taylor (1935-2013) will be on show in the exhibition including many bronze sculptures which have rarely been on public display since the early 1960s. Taylor studied at the Slade School of Art in the mid-1950s and his early prowess as a sculptor of the human figure resulted in him gaining a coveted three-year scholarship to Rome.

4 February – 16 April 2023

Developed in partnership with Messums Wiltshire, this exhibition will be the first exhibition of contemporary sculpture in the recently completed North Gallery at Orange and will radically transform the space, offering Australian audiences a rare encounter with Laurence Edwards’ work.

14 January – 26 February 2023

In his book “To Bless the Space Between Us,” the Irish scholar and poet John O’Donohue writes: “A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.”
The latest pictures by Richard Hoare demonstrate that any landscape is defined as much by  where it leads to and what adjoins it, as by what it contains.

12 – 24 December 2022

Makoto Kagoshima trained as an artist, and then worked for the Conran Shop in Japan, but it is with clay that he has found his medium.  On carved and moulded terracotta bodies, whether plates, vases, tiles or simply designed, three dimensional animals, Kagoshima unfolds a joyful and dreamlike universe of curling tendrils, bursting blooms, charming animals, darting fish, soaring birds, strutting geese and alluring snakes.

26 November – 15 January 2023 by appointment only

In 2019, the working world of Elisabeth Frink arrived at Messums Wiltshire with the reconstruction of her Woolland studio in our historic tithe barn. The studio was rescued from collapse and revived as an exhibition space displaying works from Frink’s studio and elements of her working practice and environment. As well as providing insight into her creative process, it formed a backdrop to a programme of events exploring creative environments. Now the studio has once again taken on a new life and, sited at a location nearby, will provide the venue for a series of in-focus exhibitions to be showcased online or by special appointment in person.

22 October – 20 November

This October, Messum’s Wiltshire is devoting its spaces to contemporary female artists. Each makes work centring around the body, using either their own or other bodies to reflect upon ideas around power, pleasure, and disgust. All of these women has interrogated the nature of flesh – abstracting it into sculpture, focussing on its surface or recreating it from porcelain.

22 October – 20 November

“My new body of work deals with ideas around protection, vulnerability and potential loss. Drawing upon historic religious references in a secular age I am referencing grave goods, especially those made from clay, as a source of style and expression. Grave goods come in many shapes and sizes and performed many functions but ultimately, they existed to help with the transitions from life to death and in many cultures, the transition to the afterlife.@

22 October – 15 January 2023

As part of our ‘Body Language’ exhibition this autumn, we are presenting a series of digital sculptures by artist Charlotte Colbert. Language, psychoanalysis and socio-political constructions of gender and identity are at the heart of Colbert’s practice. Her multi-part video piece, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 2017 (pictured below)

6 August – 17 October

Based in Suffolk, Laurence Edwards trained at Canterbury College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art, where he studied bronze casting and sculpture with Sir Antony Caro.

16 – 31 July

The Birdman competition is the quintessence of British humour and eccentricity. Held each summer along the south coast of England in West Sussex, people dressed in different garb attempt to fly off piers – the further the possible for prize money before splash landing in the water.

16 – 31 July

On show in Wiltshire this summer are a selection of works representing the breadth of our collection with works ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day. The display includes a significant selection of British Impressionism featuring masterpieces by Henry Lamb, Sir Matthew Smith, Julius Olsson, Raymond Coxon, Alice Maud Fanner, Percy Craft, James Brown, Mark Senior and Lucy Kemp-Welch. Together with these, a display of highlights from our modern British painting collection features works by Dame Elisabeth Frink, Alison Britton, John Beard, Kurt Jackson and James Dixon.

11 June – 10 July

The exhibition ‘Documenting Conflict’ casts light on two distinct approaches and narratives surrounding the photographic documentation of conflicts in the 1930-50s and in 2000-2010s, as seen through the lens and eye of Robert Capa and Laura El-Tantawy.

2 June – 4 July

In conjunction with our half-term week dedicated to experiencing and learning about the fascinating RAKU firing process, we are celebrating the work of renowned ceramicist David Roberts with a new display showcasing a group of his vessels. Roberts will be joining Messums Wiltshire as part of the RAKU Retreat weekend (30 May – 5 June) and will deliver a talk about his practice of the ‘Naked Raku’ on Thursday 2 June.

7 May – 5 June

The ground beneath our feet has never felt less solid than it does at the moment – yet our awareness of it has never been greater.
As the evidence mounts up about our destruction of the earth, painting, poetry, drawing and sculpture can offer some sort of marker in time – visual metaphors for our Grand Awakening.

7 May – 3 July

The ground beneath our feet has never felt less solid than it does at the moment – yet our awareness of it has never been greater.
As the evidence mounts up about our destruction of the earth, painting, poetry, drawing and sculpture can offer some sort of marker in time – visual metaphors for our Grand Awakening.

9 April – 1 May

A selection of dishes and vessels by ceramic Agalis Manessi will be in show in the foyer of the Long Gallery this Spring. Agalis Manessi is dedicated to working in the maiolica tradition. Her range of forms comprise dishes, vessels, figures, animals and plaques constructed from red terracotta clay, biscuit-fired and dipped in a tin oxide glaze to give an opaque finish.

9 April – 1 May

Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, Haraldsdóttir’s works are inspired by Nordic pattern and folklore. Her family was originally from a small village on the Snaefellness Peninsular called Olafsvík in the shadow of the celebrated twin peaked glacial mountain that inspired Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

9 April – 1 May

Makoto trained as an artist, and then worked for the Conran Shop in Japan, but it is with clay that he has found his medium.  On carved and moulded terracotta bodies, whether plates, vases, tiles or simply designed, three dimensional animals, Kagoshima unfolds a joyful and dreamlike universe of curling tendrils, bursting blooms, charming animals, darting fish, soaring birds, strutting geese and alluring snakes.

17 March – 1 May

Christie Brown’s figures teeter on the foggy intersection between art and craft. Very clearly sculptural but informed by a deep history of clay. Upon graduating from a diploma in Studio Pottery at Harrow in the early 1980’s, Brown found her work without an obvious niche.

5 March – 1 May 2022

Linda Sormin (b.1971) lives and works in New York City, and is Associate Professor of Studio Art at New York University. She has taught ceramics at Emily Carr University, Rhode Island School of Design, Sheridan College and Alfred University. Born in Bangkok, Sormin moved to Canada with her family at the age of five. She has a BA in English Literature and worked in community development for four years in Thailand and Laos. She studied ceramics at Andrews University (BA, English Literature, 1993), Sheridan College (Ceramics Diploma, 2001) and Alfred University (MFA, Ceramic Art, 2003).

5 March – 1 May 2022

For the last number of years Messums has taken a lead role among our major private art galleries in promoting the ceramic arts. This has been realised through an innovative exhibition programme, one important thread of which has been exhibitions on national ceramic cultures. Korean and British ceramic have both been subject of ground-breaking shows. The focus now is on Canada.

24 February – 3 April

From as early as the 1970’s John Walker was one of the most influential and imitated painters working in the UK; he exhibited alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, represented his country at the 1972 Venice Biennale, had extensive survey shows at both the Tate and Hayward galleries and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1985.

until Sunday 27 February

A selection of some of glass artist Dante Marioni’s best work is on display in the tithe barn. Dante Marioni burst onto the international glass scene aged nineteen, becoming famous for his sophisticated glass objects, which evoke the rich tradition of classical Mediterranean pottery and bronzes.

15 January – 27 February 2022

The drawings start with the square sheet of paper and a drawn square frame within. The square is chosen for its stability, calmness and because there is not the same association with landscape or the portrait of a rectangle.

15 January – 27 February 2022

The drawings start with the square sheet of paper and a drawn square frame within. The square is chosen for its stability, calmness and because there is not the same association with landscape or the portrait of a rectangle.

3 December – 9 January

Ti Parks graduated from the Slade School in 1962. He moved to Australia in 1964 and became an important influence in the contemporary art world there.

26 September – 16 January 2022

Man is an Animal is the most extensive collection of large-scale sculptures by Dame Elisabeth Frink to be shown in this country since the artist’s death in April 1993. Loaned from various institutions and private collectors, it was first exhibited at the Gerhard Marcks Haus Museum in Bremen, Germany.

25 September – 28 November

Bridget McCrum’s work is a potent fusion of the ancient with the modern. She works primarily in stone, from which some pieces are also cast in bronze.

17 July – 5 September

‘What Listening Knows’ is an immersive 3-channel audio and video installation by Australian artists Sonia Leber & David Chesworth, commissioned for our second Moving Image exhibition at Messums Wiltshire. It creatively interrogates different concepts around the act of listening, particularly the concept of ‘the microphone’s gaze’, which shifts the idea of the ocular gaze, or camera gaze, into an acoustic dimension.

16 July – 12 September

Messums is delighted to present ‘Unkempt’, an exhibition recognising the advent of a changing aesthetic in landscape – one that is by its nature wild, messy and more empathetic to the environment. Opening in the Long Gallery at Messums Wiltshire this July ‘Unkempt’ showcases established and emerging artists who are questioning how aesthetics can shape our opinion about the environment and creating a different way of finding beauty in our landscape.

18 June – 11 July

Jack McGarrity trained at the Glasgow School of Art, close to where he grew up in the West of Scotland, before moving to London to start at the Royal Drawing School. His works on paper are a hybrid of painting, drawing and collage of small everyday moments mixed with the high drama of cinema and the ambiguity of memory.

15 May – 11 July

In a miasma of delicately tessellated marks, After the Raft of the Medusa by painter John Beard is painted in black and white oils and wax and is accompanied by a mirrored image etched onto a vast black aluminium sheet suggesting the dark and inky depths of the sea.

15 May – 11 July 

Over the last year John Beard has painted the Fovant Hills in Wiltshire for a new body of work to be shown in the Long Gallery at Messums Wiltshire. Four large scale paintings and a selection of smaller-scale oils and watercolours form a remarkable exploration light, colour, and the experience of southern Wiltshire landscapes.

9 – 25 April

This spring ceramic artist Makoto Kagoshima will exhibit his latest pieces in the Elisabeth Frink studio at Messums Wiltshire, a collection of which were inspired by the sculptor.
Makoto Kagoshima, based in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, illustrates whimsical and heart-warming motifs on clay, making each ceramic object a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of art. Kagoshima’s designs are all done freehand.

9 April – 9 May

In this exhibition we are showing forty paintings by Alan Cotton, one of Britain’s leading landscape artists, of the coasts of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, County Kerry, Jersey and the Isle of Skye.
Depicting the the varying moods of the sea as well as the precipitous rock formations and crags that form our coastline, Cotton’s carefully constructed pictures reflect the quiet convolutions of nature and yet its constancy.

6 March – 2 May

Lee Hun Chung (born 1967) has a national reputation as an artist who has engaged with conceptualist approaches to practice. He often works with large-scale installations, that deliberately confound any demarcation between the various disciplines.
Art critic Chang Dong Kwang tells us that “Lee is a potter, sculptor, designer, architect, painter, installation artist, poet, and labourer, because he is full of raw human character”. Much of his work is multi-media, with large-scale ceramic sculptural forms at their heart.

6 March – 2 May

For our third annual celebration of ceramic we are delighted to invite Paul Greenhalgh, Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, to curate this collection of senior twentieth century ceramicists; Magdalene Odundo, Alison Britton, Carol McNicoll, Martin Smith & Steve Dixon.

5 December – 10 January

Richard Hoare had a full immersion in the British countryside from the moment he was born. He grew up on a farm not far from Dedham in East Anglia where he went to school – an area made famous by Constable and Gainsborough. After roaming the woods and plains of the area his love of nature was later amplified by walking the pilgrim routes of England, France and Spain.

30 September – 18 October

Daniel Agdag is an artist and filmmaker based in Melbourne, Australia whose practice sits at the nexus of sculpture and motionography. He creates highly detailed sculptural pieces that have been described as ‘architectural in form, whimsical and antiquated in nature and inconceivably intricate’ and we are delighted to welcome him back for his second solo show with the gallery this autumn.
Daniel sits within a group of artists represented by the gallery who take quality and the handmade to the extreme. His works, made primarily from cardboard, take many hours to complete and are strikingly beautiful in their intricacy. Drawn to the utilitarian origins and monochromatic presentation of his material, Daniel creates a paradox of fragility and strength with structures that resemble architectural forms and machines by utilising a medium that is essentially paper, preserving them under glass vitrines or bell jars. His work is both delicate and eccentric and he spends a lot of time thinking about and absorbing objects in the built environment, their peculiar details and functions, which, once resolved in his mind, begin to slowly emerge, and coalesce.

19 September – 18 October

Alexander Lindsay creates photographic landscapes of extraordinary beauty. For the past forty years, Lindsay has brought his cameras to the most extreme situations and environments on the planet. From his earliest experiences with the Maasai tribe, a five year spell in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation and his expeditions to photograph and film the wreck of the Titanic 4km beneath the oceans waves, Lindsay has always sought to immerse himself in situations where, as he explains, ‘the imagination is rendered unnecessary’.

12 September – 18 October

The return of our architectural models exhibition, which this year is centred on the role of creative spaces and set against the backdrop of Elisabeth Frink’s Woolland Studio. We will look at both the importance of creative space and highlight the beauty in the making of an architectural model with an exhibition including those designed for artists’ studios, galleries, arts schools and libraries by leading architects including Invisible Studio/ Piers Taylor, Jenny Jones, Matheson Whiteley, Feilden Fowles, Peter Clegg, vPPR, Stiff + Trevillion and Niall McLaughlin.

4 September – 18 October

Shying away from showing his work publicly in his life time, Brian Taylor’s work is seldom seen. This remarkable body of sculpture and rare drawings are indicative of Taylor’s unparalleled observation of animated volume and we are delighted to be showing this collection of sculpture and drawing in Messums Wiltshire.

Brian Taylor studied at the Slade School of Art in the mid-1950s and his prowess as a sculptor of the human figure was so impressive that he gained a covetable three-year scholarship to Rome. The artworks Taylor encountered there stimulated him enormously, ranging from classical sculpture right through to early twentieth-century modernism.

‘Italy called him back in 1971, and he could not resist an impulse to visit the Serra di Burano. This alluring rural area, not far from Umbria, enabled him to study horses – in particular an unusually large and well-built animal strong enough to run even when pulling a very hefty cart. Although this pugnacious creature threatened to bite Taylor, he insisted on studying the mighty horse at close quarters. He cunningly distracted the animal by flinging wet clay onto its nose. And while the horse licked off this muddy substance, Taylor took detailed measurements of its head and body without suffering any assault at all.’      Art Historian & Critic, Richard Cork
Taylor’s interest in sculpting animal form has pervaded his work ever since and we are delighted to show a selection of stand out bronze works focussing specifically on Taylor’s obsession with the characters and forms of animals.

4 July – 18 October 2020

The working world of Elisabeth Frink has arrived at Messums Wiltshire with the resurrection of her Woolland studio in our historic tithe barn. The studio, which Messums rescued from collapse in 2019, has been reconstructed to display a collection of original plasters alongside tools and objects salvaged from Woolland, providing a never seen before insight into one of Britain’s foremost sculptors.