Activating the lawns and landscape surrounding the barn and drawing inspiration from our summer Festival of Dance, Messums Wiltshire presented 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 washed 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 rendered the body as engine of movement in metal and stone.

In dialogue with the programme of contemporary choreography, workshops and films inside the barn, it probed the complementary dichotomies of inner and outer, fluid and solid; contingency and constancy, fleeting and timelessness.

Featured alongside works by Dame Elisabeth Frink, Sean Henry, Thomas Merrett and Jason Mulligan, these sculptures present movement and stillness as the outward expression inner states of being.

The exhibition was on view throughout the summer months, and was accompanied by an essay by Isabel de Vasconcellos.