Devon/Leeds
Taking a dramatic step away from its normal image of garden fêtes and tea rooms, Britain's best-loved charity, the National Trust, is mounting an outdoor exhibition of contemporary sculpture and installations in the grounds of one of its properties. Produced in association with Häagen-Dazs icecream, the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, the event is entitled "Ha-Ha" and will be held at Killerton Estate, Broadclyst, Exeter. It is curated by Iwona Blazwick, former ICA curator, and Peter Pay of Plymouth University, whose Arts and Design Faculty were behind much of the initial designing and planning of the event (from 19 June to 31 October). Artists involved in the project include Turner Prize winner Grenville Davey. Elsewhere in the eighteenth-century park Colin Rose has balanced wicker spheres on the branches of a sixty-foot cedar tree; Peter Appleton's fencing posts are activated by sunlight to play bird-song; Laotian artist Phong Phaophanit's neon Sanskrit fragments are set against a clump of palm trees; and Peter Randall Page has placed biomorphic forms carved from black Kilkenny stone at the entrance to the stables.
A developing trend towards contemporary sculpture in a country house setting may also lie behind a new exhibition until 4 July at Harewood House, Leeds, Yorkshire. Called "Mid-Winter Muster: sculptures at Mount Victor Station", it displays photographs documenting a project by Andy Goldsworthy undertaken in Australia in 1991 and shown as part of the Adelaide festival.