Antony Gormley's Time Horizon at Houghton Hall

The highly-acclaimed exhibition Time Horizon, one of Antony Gormley’s most spectacular large-scale installations, is being shown at Houghton Hall in Norfolk until 31 October 2024. It is the first time the work has been staged in the UK.

Speaking of the exhibition, Antony Gormley said: “Time is a very relative process, you might say, and one of the ways in which we register it is how time is held in the objects that surround us. At Houghton, we have a 300-year-old extraordinary, imaginative exercise of the building of a palace and a park. But we’re not so conscious, as it were, of the raw truth of nature, or the elemental world, and I wanted to plug into that; to put the house and the park into a new relationship.”

The artist has installed one work in the lower hall (Arcade) at Houghton and, buried to half its height, this gives the level of the rest of the works, which span some 300 acres. The 100 life-size sculptures therefore create a single horizontal plane across the landscape.

Some are buried, allowing only the head to be visible, while others are sunk to the chest or knees according to the topography.  Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface.  Around a quarter of the works are placed on columns that vary from a few centimetres high to several meters off the ground. Two are in the award-winning Walled Garden, where they survey the landscape from four metre high plinths.

One of the most important artists of his generation, widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space, Antony Gormley says his ambition for the show at Houghton for people to roam far and wide.

“Time Horizon is not a picture, it is a field and you are in it. The work puts the experience of the subject/visitor/protagonist on an equal footing with all material presences, organic and inorganic.  The quality of the light, the time of the year, the state of the weather and the condition of your mind, body and soul are all implicated in the field, as is all the evidence within it of human activity already accomplished as well as the plethora of life forms that surround the hall.”

Houghton, owned by the seventh Marquess of Cholmondeley, who lives there with his family, has built a reputation for bringing world-class art to Norfolk. 2024 is a triumphant year for the historic estate near King’s Lynn, for running concurrently with Antony Gormley’s exhibition is a second solo installation by Magdalene Odundo, celebrated worldwide for her exceptional ceramic artistry.

Magdalene’s exhibition (running until 29 September 2024) illustrates a captivating interplay between her distinctive works and the traditional grandeur of Houghton's State Rooms, and features both established pieces and new creations spanning an illustrious 30-year career. Notably, visitors have the chance to witness a towering new commission, conceived during Odundo's residency at the iconic Wedgwood factory in Stoke-on-Trent.

Need to know: 

Time Horizon, Antony Gormley runs until 31 October 2024.

Magdalene Odundo at Houghton Hall runs until 29 September 2024.

For opening days, times and prices, visit here.