White Cube’s first outdoor sculpture exhibition puts the work of 12 modern and contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Danh Vo, on view in the grounds of Cheshire’s Arle...
exhibition puts the work of 12 modern and contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley and Danh Vo, on view in the grounds of Cheshire’s Arley HallArley Hall and Gardens, a stately home in Cheshire, north-west England, is famed for its Jacobean Revival architecture and its picturesque landscape, created over 270 years by successive Viscounts Ashbrook and their families.
‘At the same time as being a symbol of continuity, history and stability, gardens are continually changing and evolving,’ says Susanna Greeves, senior director at White Cube of her inspiration for the display. ‘This is a theme that we had in mind as we took on the task of placing contemporary art in this already very carefully curated setting. We thought about the ideas of nature and order, the tropes of the English country house garden, and how we might play with and subvert those.
Classical statuary is often placed where it might draw attention to a fully orchestrated view; in a prime spot along Arley’s Furlong Walk, where one might expect a nymph, Greeves has installed a radical work by Canadian artist David Altmejd.
Noxcalidus, The intense heat on the skin of a sleeping person, as if all their secret delusions were becoming vapour. Inspired by the Poppy’s milk that induces deep sleep and intense dreams, and connects us to a primordial consciousness or cosmic timesMeanwhile, Mona Hatoum’s, a waist-height spherical work covered in a circuitous pattern that resembles the lobes of the brain, occupies a small clearing in The Grove , as though an alien seed pod about to take root.
A large swathe of The Grove is dedicated to the work of Isamu Noguchi, represented by White Cube since 2021. Glistening gently in the summer sun, each of the sculptures in hot-dipped galvanised steel has an alluring silhouette, ranging from the majestic peaks and valleys of Rain Mountain to the Venus of Willendorf-like Goddess . But the star of the show is the bright red.