This March, a major new UK sculpture park will open in the grounds of Compton Verney, featuring work by eight modern and contemporary artists drawn from around the world, including an important new commission by Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti (b.1971).
The sculpture park will stage a radical reinvention of the grounds, as modern and contemporary sculpture transforms the Georgian setting. Works by Sarah Lucas (b.1962), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), Helen Chadwick (1953-1996), Permindar Kaur (b.1965), Larry Achiampong (b.1984), Nicolas Deshayes (b.1983) and Augustas Serapinas (b.1990) will be found amongst the wildlife, oak, ash and lime trees, wildflower meadows and bridges that were first laid out by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in 1768.
The opening forms part of the anniversary celebrations marking 20 years since the art gallery first opened its doors to the public and builds on the extraordinary work it has played host to. Responding to the long history of Compton Verney – a space that existed long before the 18th-century designs of Brown were first drawn up – new voices have been invited into the historical landscape, the sculptures will interact with the natural setting and prompt important questions relating to the past and future of the surrounding ground. Whereas once the landscape had been created with only a select few in mind, now it is open to all Compton Verney audiences, and Sculpture in the Park will continue this reimagining.
Featuring both temporary displays as well as a permanent fixture across 120 acres of land, the first edition focuses on the concept of ‘utopia’ as a form of community, using the historical landscape to explore concepts of belonging, kinship and equality.
Stepping through the willow tunnel at the entrance to the grounds, visitors will be met with Overgrown House (2020), a large structural outline of an overgrown house made from black galvanized steel by Permindar Kaur. With a series of grass-like offshoots giving the building a fairytale-like appearance, the structure evokes part abandoned house as well as the potential for growth. It follows a series of works that the British artist has created featuring houses and the home, often using items from the domestic and childhood arena. Amidst the landscape of Compton Verney, Kaur’s sculpture is both a private and public space, prompting questions about where and what is home?
At the head of the lake, a major new site-specific work by Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti, commissioned by Compton Verney, will be the first permanent sculptural work for the grounds and will become part of Compton Verney’s permanent collection. The work Verzutti has realised for Compton Verney is part of her long-standing Venus series referencing the Venus of Willendorf. Discovered in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century, this artefact was made around 25,000 years ago, and is often regarded as the mother of all sculpture. Here, Naked Venus (2024) reclaims the female gaze in what has been a male-dominated landscape, a powerful figure looking out across the grounds. Sensuous and tactile, Verzutti’s sculptures often seem to sit outside of period and place, conjuring relics or archaeological finds. They take a playful approach to art history, quoting and reimagining works that stretch from Brancusi to Brazilian modernism, from Picasso back to the Paleolithic.
Works by two legendary figures in sculpture will also be on display. Spider (1996) is a bronze sculpture over 7 metres wide and over 3 metres high by the artist Louise Bourgeois. This iconic and significant sculpture is part of a series of Spider sculptures made during the 1990s and 2000s. For Bourgeois, the powerful motif was symbolic of her mother, a weaver and tapestry repairer, whom she described as her best friend and as “deliberate, clever, patient…and useful as a spider.” She also equated the industrious insect and its web-making to her own artistic practice, in which she produced sculpture in relationship to her body and as an expression of her inner emotions and anxieties. The active stance of this sculpture conveys the spider’s protective and predatory nature, revealing Bourgeois’s complex relationship with motherhood and female identity.
Turner Prize-nominated British artist Helen Chadwick, who created works investigating ideas of gender and the body, will be represented with one of her most important sculptural works, Piss Flowers (1991-2). Comprising a series of bronze sculptures that resemble flowers, the title of the works also references an unconventional but important part of their creation, where during Chadwick´s residency at Banff Arts Centre in Canada, she and her partner David Notarius took turns urinating on a flower-shaped metal mould in snow to create the shapes that form the sculpture. From these casts bronze versions were produced and the bulb-like sculptures were placed on pedestals. In an act of inversion, Chadwick´s urination created the phallic pistil at the centre of each flower.
Atop the Old Town Meadow, sits a monumental new work reimagined especially for Compton Verney, Standtune (2024) by Augustas Serapinas. Employing an ancient fencing technique developed for defence purposes in Sweden and produced in wood local to Compton Verney, the sculpture acknowledges the ancient village of Compton Murdak that once stood on the site. Standtune, reimagined for Compton Verney asks questions of its site and how people interact with place and what we decide to pay attention to. It highlights the overlooked and questions ideas of common cultural heritage, a long-standing theme in the artist’s work.
From this vantage point, visitors will look up the hill and see four large flags billowing over the grounds, part of Larry Achiampong´s afro-futuristic project Relic Traveller: Phase. The design of each flag features 54 stars that represent the 54 countries of Africa and highlight the African diasporic identity. The colours green, black and red reflect its land, its people and the struggles the continent has endured, and the field of yellow gold represents a new day and prosperity. Presented here the work references Achiampong’s exploration of narratives of migration and questioning of utopian visions asking who has a right to the land?
Following a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at Tate Britain, Sarah Lucas will present Perceval (2006) a life-size bronze horse and cart. The work is a large-scale replica of a Clydesdale horse and cart, a traditional china ornament that would not look out of place on a British mantelpiece from several decades ago. Scaled up, the horse is powerful and majestic while offering an unthreatening sense of pastoralism and reliability. The cart houses two cast concrete marrows: symbols of phallic fertility. These giant vegetables are cast in cement, moving the knick-knack replica away from the realm of kitsch, and offsetting the smooth finish of the bronze with a rugged quality. Titled after a Knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, Perceval reflects a fascination for Englishness evident in much of Lucas’s work. Now this iconic horse will graze in the meadow of Compton Verney.
In Fountains (2018) by Nicolas Deshayes, eight large cast aluminum fountains take the form of undulating upright forms, on the surface of a vast custom-built basin. Knotted and coiled, reminiscent of a digestive tract, the bloated silhouettes take position on the original 17th century garden where there once would have been a fountain, in a nod to Compton Verney’s long history.
Geraldine Collinge, Compton Verney Chief Executive Officer (CEO) says: “For 20 years Compton Verney has been welcoming visitors to its extraordinary exhibitions, events and grounds, and in 2024 we are marking this important anniversary with our most wide-ranging and ambitious programme to date, starting off with the launch of our major, new sculpture park. We believe Compton Verney is an extraordinary, unusual, creative experience – a place for the curious, where all are welcome to be inspired, delighted, challenged and rejuvenated. Whether you’ve been visiting us for 20 years or have yet to visit, we look forward to welcoming everyone to come and explore and see what Compton Verney can offer them in this packed 20th birthday year.”
Sculpture in the Park is supported by the Foyle Foundation. The acquisition of Erika Verzutti’s Naked Venus has been supported by Compton Verney Collection Settlement and the Henry Moore Foundation.
About
Compton Verney is an extraordinary, unusual, creative experience. A place for the curious that inspires, delights, challenges and rejuvenates with an award-winning gallery based in a Grade I-listed Georgian mansion, amid 120 acres of Grade II-listed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown parkland in Warwickshire. We invite you to roam and discover all that we have to offer, including six permanent collections (Naples, Northern European Art 1450-1650, British Portraits, Chinese, British Folk Art & The Marx Lambert Collection) and a schedule of thought-provoking changing exhibitions and events, both indoors and out. Whether you’re after peace and tranquillity, or an uplifting creative experience – you’ll find it here. Compton Verney is an accredited museum and a registered charity. For more information, visit www.comptonverney.org.uk /
