Henry Moore and more landmark sculpture exhibition premieres at Kew Wakehurst

Kew Wakehurst, a wild botanic garden and living laboratory in Sussex, will transform into a vast open-air gallery this summer, presenting  Henry Moore and more – a major outdoor sculpture exhibition, bringing together Moore’s iconic forms with three works by leading contemporary artists, Rana Begum, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Rafael Pérez Evans.

Framed by Wakehurst’s spectacular American Prairie, Winter Garden and Mansion lawns, four timeless sculptures by Henry Moore will be exhibited in a unique outdoor gallery, continuing the dialogue that Moore had with nature throughout his prestigious career.

These innovative contemporary works will take in some of Wakehurst’s most spectacular vistas, from the Grade I listed Elizabethan Mansion, across The Paddock, and among the national collection of Nothofagus beech trees in an evolving dialogue between art and nature.

These contrasting and evocative new works extend Henry Moore’s sculptural legacy as a bridge between humanity and nature. Where Moore’s forms evoke permanence and history, these contemporary responses explore themes of light, time, change, rest and renewal—continuing the dialogue between body, landscape, and material in an innovative way. These works will allow visitors to Wakehurst to explore art, by walking through, pausing, noticing changes in light and landscape, in this unique celebration across the landscape.

Contemporary artworks: two world premieres, one UK premiere

Rana Begum RA – No.1604 Mesh | World Premiere

Medium: Timber and metal fencing                     Location: The Paddock

Internationally acclaimed for her minimalist approach to light, colour, and geometry, London- based artist Rana Begum unveils No.1604 Mesh, a 14-metre-long sculptural installation merging industrial and organic materials.

A new commission, specially designed for the Henry Moore and more exhibition, No.1604 Mesh is constructed from industrial fencing interwoven with timber from Wakehurst trees, with a zigzag structure that follows the slope of The Paddock meadow. Its rhythmic design plays with the tension between natural and man-made forms, inviting reflection on architecture’s presence within the landscape. Shifting hues inspired by dogwood (Cornus) in Wakehurst’s Winter Garden and changing sunlight and weather conditions mean No.1604 Mesh transforms throughout the day and the seasons. The result is an evolving artwork that mirrors the temporal rhythms of nature.

Rana Begum says: “The connection with nature, its rhythm and cycles, are important elements in my practice – specifically the use of natural light, which applies especially in projects like No. 1604 Mesh, at Wakehurst. Because the work is site-specific, developing the concept behind the sculpture begins with first looking, feeling and experiencing the site, examining the types of flowers and trees surrounding the piece, and looking at how the sky opens up in relation to the ground. All of these elements form part of the sculpture and the work has been designed in dialogue with these features.”

Paloma Varga Weisz – Wilde Leute 3, 6, and 18 2023 | UK Premiere

Medium: Bronze Location: Mansion Lawn

Celebrated German sculptor Paloma Varga Weisz brings her Wilde Leute series to Wakehurst, showing them for the first time ever in the UK. Paloma Varga Weisz’s Wilde Leute are a modern continuation of a historical figure that was described in the Middle Ages as a symbol of the primitive state of man.  The artist began developing the series in 1998 as a collection of small ceramic sculptures, which she later revisited in various sizes and materials such as wood, glass and in this case, bronze.

The series draws reference to early and medieval Renaissance interpretations of familial intimacy and harmonious communing with nature. Yet, Varga Weisz conveys her figures with abstract fluidity blurring the preconceived boundaries of gender; the varying arrangements of elder and childlike characters envisioning families with manifold and diverse interrelationships of primordial intimacy freed of convention.

Set within the open landscape, the permanence of bronze contrasts with the mutability of nature, creating a dialogue between transience and stability, individuality and community, past and present.

Paloma Varga Weisz says “Showing my Wilde Leute at Wakehurst feels like bringing them home to a place where art and nature breathe together. Henry Moore’s work has always embodied a dialogue between the human form and the landscape. That same tension, between civilisation and wilderness, lies at the heart of my sculptures. In Wakehurst’s wild surroundings, these figures stand as they were meant to, as half-human, half-nature, quietly alive within the landscape.”

Rafael Pérez Evans – Horizontals | World Premiere

Medium: Wood             Location: Nothofagus Beech tree collection

Spanish-Welsh artist Rafael Pérez Evans introduces Horizontals, a series of six wooden resting sculptures made from salvaged timber sourced from fallen trees at Wakehurst.

Each sculpture offers a simple invitation to lie down and form a relationship with the trees above, the sky, temperature and smell of the wood, the ground, and the changing light. Visitors are encouraged to lie down on the sculptures, shifting from the upright pace of daily life to a slower, horizontal, more receptive encounter with the forest canopy.

Developed in collaboration with Wakehurst’s Arboretum Team, who sourced timber from fallen trees across the landscape, Horizontals grows from Pérez Evans’ new research into rest, exhaustion, and breakdown ecologies. In lying down, the body enacts a quiet resistance – a deliberate slowing against the accelerated pace of contemporary life, and an opening towards the living world.

Pérez Evans was raised on a lemon farm in southern Spain – a landscape of agricultural labour and rural life that continues to pulse through his practice.  Now a sculptor and DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford, with a major forthcoming exhibition at Mostyn, Wales, his work asks what it means to make space for what the world no longer has time for.

Rafael Pérez Evans says: “My own experience of the site has shown me how being with nature can retune you – like a radio finding its signal, Wakehurst shifts you into a slower, more grounded frequency, a different rhythm for being alive. I am interested in what happens when a person is permitted to stop – to lie down, and be held by something larger: the ground, the smell of wood, the trees, the sky, the temperature, and the changing light.”

Henry Moore and more exhibition at Wakehurst opens on 5 June 2026 and will run to 23 May 2027. 

Eva Owen, Programme Manager, Wakehurst says: “Henry Moore and more embodies our mission to care for and protect the natural world. Our contemporary artists have taken inspiration from Wakehurst as a living laboratory and the vital science and research that takes place through our pioneering Nature Unlocked programme and our globally important Millennium Seed Bank.  This exhibition is an incredible opportunity to be a living gallery for these exceptional and iconic artworks that explore the profound human connection to nature. We hope our visitors can pause, reflect and experience the joy and awe of connecting with nature framed by these incredible sculptures through each changing season.”

Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute says: “At the Henry Moore Institute, sculpture is central to everything we do, from supporting new work to exploring sculpture’s histories and possibilities. This project has been a special opportunity to bring that approach to Wakehurst, placing Henry Moore in dialogue with leading contemporary artists in a setting of exceptional natural richness. Together, these works show how sculpture can transform our experience of a landscape, even as the landscape itself reshapes how sculpture is seen and understood. At Wakehurst, sculpture feels active and alive: rooted in place, responsive to nature and open to new interpretation.”

In London, Henry Moore: Monumental Nature opened at Kew Gardens on 9 May. This exhibition will be the largest and most comprehensive outdoor showcase of Moore’s work to date, featuring 30 works across Kew’s landscape and inside the iconic Temperate House, the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world. A dedicated exhibition in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art will also feature over 90 rarely seen works, exploring Moore’s unique process of ‘thinking through nature’.