GARY HUME AT THE NEW ART CENTRE

Who knew that one of the country’s most respected contemporary art venues was tucked away in Wiltshire’s rolling countryside?

Roche Court started life as a 19th-century house and grounds before morphing, in 1994, into the New Art Centre.

A number of buildings have since been added to thesite by architect Stephen Marshall, the latest of which, Design House, expands the garden cottage into a bright, open space dedicated to modern design from the likes of mobile designer Daniel Reynolds and ceramicist Edmund de Waal.

On 23rd March (until 12th May), the gallery will host Carvings, an exhibition featuring sculptures by artist, Gary Hume.

Already well known for his paintings on aluminium panels, which often feature striking colour combinations made using household paint, Hume's sculpture is perhaps less familiar, though in fact he has continued to make three-dimensional objects throughout his career and it has often had a strong punctuating presence in his art exhibitions.

Hume’s Carvings in the exhibition are of legs and arms. Anatomised from the rest of the human body, they hover somewhere between abstraction and figuration, like the corporeal fragments of Classical statuary. Hume plays with the conventions of monumental marble sculpture, treating it with a mischievous sense of form and scale and indeed colour.

The Carvings also hover somewhere between sculpture and painting, since Hume also paints aspects of them in the bright colours we normally associate with his two-dimensional work.

Elsewhere on site, the sculpture park displays works by a roster of internationally renowned artists, all showcased against a backdrop of gardens and parkland.

Expect to see installations by names such as Conrad Shawcross (above), Michael Craig-Martin (below) and president of the Royal Academy of Arts Christopher Le Brun.

NewArtCentre, Roche Court, East Winterslow, Salisbury, SP5 1BG.

sculpture.uk.com