New Sculpture Park & Art Gallery Opening Tours
Join us at Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens to celebrate the official launch of the spectacular new sculpture park and exhibition - ‘The Walk of Life’ by Anton Smit.
New Leonardslee Sculpture Park: book your tour from 22 -26 September
A limited number of tickets are now available for this special launch event, which includes a 30-45 minute highlights tour of the sculpture park exhibition and a lovely glass of wine on arrival. Tours are from Wednesday, 22 September to Sunday, 26 September at 12.00, 13:00, 14:00 and 15:00 each day.
This event offers guests a special opportunity to see this impressive collection of more than 80 individual sculptures. These are arranged around the estate’s 240-acre, Grade 1-listed grounds and gardens, so visitors can explore Smit’s extraordinary artistic practice in this beautiful setting.
This is the largest new exhibition of outdoor sculptures showcasing a solo artist in the UK during 2021.
The collection by prolific artist-poet Smit features towering figures, colossal heads, fluid female forms, and precision-cut warriors, created from steel, clay, stone, cement, bronze, and other media at his Cape Town studios. He planned the positioning of each sculpture at Leonardslee for maximum effect, along the meandering valley trail, around its seven interlaced lakes at the centre of the Grade I Listed gardens.
At the start of the sculpture park is the striking 7.5 metre presence of Faith, located next to the estate’s Italianate mansion. As visitors wander down through woodlands, they will encounter the muscular bust of Colossal Youth, and then other exhibits - The Fruit of the Spirit, Stream of Consciousness, Ladies of the Lakes - their heads turned toward the sky, their forms at once defiant and vulnerable as they stand or seemingly hover, with each exhibit including with it the artist’s brief, reflective poetry.
Smit’s angels, floating and stretching figures and abstract works will create a very special experience for visitors to the gardens says estate owner Penny Streeter OBE:
“The sculptures are faithful to the enterprising spirit of the gardens created in the late 1800s by Sir Edmund Loder, one of the great Victorian collectors of flora and fauna. As well as gazelle, beavers, kangaroos and wallabies, he most famously introduced exotic plants from as far away as the Himalayas and the Americas. The sculptures will be very much at home amongst the massive rhododendrons and towering redwood trees - and the colony of wallabies that still thrive on the estate.”
The gardens were landscaped in the 1800s around the series of lakes that were dug out originally as ‘hammer ponds’ for smelting iron ore from 1580 onwards and were used to produce cannonballs for Oliver Cromwell’s army.
Anton Smit says:
“Leonardslee was the inspiration for ‘The Walk of Life’, which we have planned for three years. There is poetic synchronicity between the smelting of iron ore and the forging of massive sculptures - and the creation of these beautiful gardens centuries ago. The intense heat, the roar and exhale of flames, the clamour of metal on metal; from this, great beauty is forged.”
Penny Streeter bought Leonardslee, described as the finest woodland gardens in England, in 2017, following nine years’ closure and neglect. She restored the estate extensively over a two-year period before it opened again to the public in 2019, under the management of her son Adam Streeter.
“The creation of the sculpture park is a further commitment by our family to this very special place, as a heritage site and with woodlands under threat throughout the UK. The plant collection is exceptional in its diversity and maturity, with several rare ‘champion’ trees,” says Penny Streeter.
The gardens offer a protected ecosystem for rare wildlife. This includes Emperor Dragonflies and Damselflies, White Admiral and Purple Hairstreak butterflies and migratory and native birds - Kites, Great Tits, Tree Creepers, Nuthatches, Woodpeckers and Nightingales.
Visitors to the estate can also see a unique dolls house exhibition that depicts the Edwardian era estate and neighbouring villages at a 1:12 scale. They can then enjoy a classic afternoon tea in the Grade II Listed Leonardslee House and dine in Michelin star Restaurant Interlude, which offers a multi-course tasting menu under award-winning chef Jean Delport.
The sculpture park and artworks on display at Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens are open now.
Tours are from Wednesday 22nd to Sunday 26th September at 12.00pm, 1.00pm, 2,00pm and 3.00pm
£25non-members | £15 members
