About
About
The New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park is a commercial gallery set in the rolling Wiltshire countryside, near Salisbury — a specialist in 20th- and 21st-century art, and a pioneer of the commercially-run sculpture park in the UK.
1958. The New Art Centre is established by Madeleine, Lady Bessborough in Sloane Street, London. From the start, the gallery champions young and emerging artists — particularly graduates of the art schools of the fifties and sixties — providing a platform for exhibitions and sales of their work.
1974. Lady Bessborough and her husband relocate to the Wiltshire countryside, acquiring Roche Court — a house originally built in 1804 for the family of Admiral Nelson — as a working farm. She becomes a pioneer of presenting sculpture within the landscape, playing a significant role in the early development of outdoor sculpture exhibitions in the UK.
1994. The gallery moves from London to Roche Court, East Winterslow. The park and woodlands which surround the house allow a focus on exhibiting outdoor sculpture at scale. Artists who first showed with the gallery decades ago — now in mid- or late-career — are sited in the gardens and in the award-winning contemporary indoor spaces.
Today. The gallery represents leading artists and estates, including Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Caro, Ian Stephenson and John Hubbard, and stages a closely-curated programme of modern and contemporary painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics and textiles.
Scottish architect Stephen Marshall was commissioned to add four indoor exhibition spaces at Roche Court, each of which has won several architectural awards. All four share a material language of frameless glass, oak, Chilmark stone and smooth natural render.
1998
The first indoor gallery, opened in 1998, comprises an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows connecting the main house to the nineteenth-century Orangery — conceived so that any exhibition on view can be enjoyed from the outside.
2001
A contemporary domestic space for the display of smaller works of art, inspired in part by Kettle's Yard, Cambridge — a place celebrated for uniting artwork and the quotidian, bringing exceptional pieces into a setting that is modest, liveable and tranquil.
2018
Located in Roche Court's walled garden, the Design House transformed and enlarged the original Garden Cottage into a unique blend of gallery and living space — a functional home that encourages visitors to see how painting, sculpture, ceramics and furniture can coexist and provide joy in the home.
The courtyard
The most recent conversion in the courtyard shows collection displays alongside the Artists House — Edmund de Waal, Ian Stephenson, Barbara Hepworth, Bill Woodrow, David Ward and many more.
What's on viewThe gallery is led by its founder and director, Madeleine Bessborough, supported by a small team across the galleries, the park and the Roche Court Educational Trust — the charity she established in 2004 to teach children and young people to look, think and speak about art.