Antony Gormley and Magdalene Odundo

Houghton Hall’s 2024 programme will see Antony Gormley and Magdalene Odundo stage major solo presentations. Antony Gormley will present Time Horizon, with 100 life-size, cast iron bodies punctuating the grounds of Houghton Hall in Norfolk. In the Hall and Contemporary Gallery, Magdalene Odundo will present her first solo exhibition in the UK since her acclaimed 2019 survey at The Hepworth Wakefield and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

Antony Gormley: Time Horizon
Dates:  Sunday 21 April – Thursday 31 October 2024

Time Horizon, one of Antony Gormley’s most spectacular large-scale installations, will be shown across Houghton Hall’s house and grounds next spring, the first time the work has been staged in the UK since it was installed in Catanzaro, Italy, in 2006. Featuring 100 life-size bodies, the sculptures are all installed at the same datum level to create a single horizontal plane across over 200 acres of parkland. Some sculptures will be buried and others elevated on concrete columns. This installation, which Gormley describes as a form of acupuncture, interacts with the particularity of its surroundings: trees, house, running deer, other sculptures and the changing conditions of the weather, and it invites visitors to become part of a reflexive field. Antony Gormley is one of the most important artists of his generation and is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally.

Magdalene Odundo
Dates:  Sunday12 May – Sunday 29 September 2024

One of the world’s most revered ceramic artists, Dame Magdalene Odundo, will present an exhibition of sculptures made and sited in response to the state rooms at Houghton Hall. The group of new works will be presented in the great Stone Hall, while early works have been selected to create resonant dialogues with the William Kent-designed interiors. The exhibition will also include a new commission created during Odundo’s recent residency at Wedgwood, reflecting on the history of the company, Josiah Wedgwood’s role in the abolitionist movement and the continued fight for racial equality. This will be Odundo’s first solo exhibition in the UK since her acclaimed 2019 survey The Journey of Things at The Hepworth Wakefield and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

Houghton Hall was built by Sir Robert Walpole, Great Britain’s first Prime Minister, in 1722. Designed by prominent Georgian architects Colen Campbell and James Gibbs, it is one of the country’s finest examples of Palladian architecture. Houghton and its estate passed to the Cholmondeley family at the end of the 18th Century and remains a family home. The house and award-winning gardens have been open to the public since 1976.

Lord Cholmondeley and The Houghton Arts Foundation continue to build a collection of contemporary art at Houghton including a number of site-specific commissions. With links to colleges and public institutions across the region, the Foundation’s aim is for Houghton to become a focus for those who wish to see great art of our time in an historic setting.The 2024 exhibitions by Antony Gormley and Magdalene Odundo follow those by James Turrell (2015), Richard Long (2017), Damien Hirst (2018), Henry Moore (2019), Anish Kapoor (2020), Tony Cragg (2021) and Sean Scully (2023).