We’re looking for regular volunteers to help with the art programme, gardens and rewilding (wildlife conservation). You can volunteer 6 hours a fortnight or more.
When you’re here volunteering you get free food, learning, nature, art and fun!
If you would like to volunteer at Devon Sculpture Park please email hello@devonsculpturepark.org.
In the future we hope to provide support for local support groups and charities.
Devon Sculpture Park is all about environmental art in a rewilded park.
Discover a budding new contemporary art centre with open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, artist studios, retreat facilities and natural stages for performance – art, theatre, music and more. We host a diverse programme. We put the artist at the centre of everything we do.
Mingle with creatives for coffee, lunch or tea at the Robert Adam Gallery. Get involved in our artist programme and a sculpture park genuinely tackling climate change.
As an artist your first step could be to join us for a Day Visit or Environmental Art Tour led by the parks curator – that way you get to know the place and its ethos. You will need to pre-book your visit as numbers are limited – CLICK HERE.
If you are unable to visit the park, join us at DSP Online from just £3 per month.
One of the most impactful views in Devon acts as backdrop. Steeped in history the rewilding park supports a mixed programme of contemporary art and performance from UK and international artists.
Created by artist and environmentalist, Philip Letts, indoor and outdoor art covers all forms that speak to our themes:
– contemporary
– political
– environmental
– organic
We exist to support and showcase both established and emerging artists. We’re not afraid to show experimental art. We love highly contemporary art from bold artists.
If you would like to be considered for exhibitions or performances at Devon Sculpture Park please contact hello@devonsculpturepark.org. It would be helpful if you could include your bio and portfolio.
Visit us and use the parks extraordinary backdrop to create art, photography, video, music, performance, literature and more.
Art groups and associations can meet and work here using the extensive indoor and outdoor facilities. To enquire contact hello@devonsculpturepark.org.
The sculpture park has a permanent collection which includes dozens of environmental sculptures from leading UK artists as well as a collection of resident artist Letts’ environmental artworks.
Outdoor art includes sculpture, both dead and living, installations, graffiti and outdoor paintings including mixed media.
Devon Sculpture Park and the wilded Capability Brown gardens are extraordinary. They form the perfect backdrop for your creative, rewilded retreat.
‘One of the most beautiful gardens I have seen…’ Toby Buckland, gardener, TV presenter and author.
This is one of the last remaining Capability Brown gardens in the South West. It is surrounded by an ancient, rewilding deer park. Mamhead Park (South) sits just a few miles south of Exeter on Haldon Hill facing south east with endless sea views. It is a centre for natural climate solutions and a leader in smaller scale rewilding.
Come and experience our approach to rewilding and see the impact it makes first hand. You can even learn how to wild your garden or field.
We host a number of guided tours including a 2 hour Rewilding Tour of the Wilded lands (£35pp) with a Rewilding expert plus an all day Rewilding tour of the rewilded lands and the Wilded Capability Brown gardens, lunch included (£85pp). To enquire email hello@devonsculpturepark.org.
The estate is owned by the Letts family who invented the commercial diary over 200 years ago. The Letts publishing business has been a leader in personal media and education ever since. Today the family is focused on the arts, education and natural solutions to the climate crisis.
Lakes and streams weave through a number of historic buildings and follies, including the famed Robert Adam Orangery, providing constant contours for sculpture. Our nationally important collection of historic trees frame each vista and house thousands of birds and wildlife. Some of our trees are 1,000 years old, some were planted this year.
The sculpture park is surrounded by a 100 acre Rewilding project which, along with the historic gardens, is leading the way in small and medium scale Rewilding. Visitors get to experience natural climate solutions in action. Biodiversity abounds, nature leads. A place where time stood still. Where wildlife and plantlife regeneration comes first.
We believe that nature and wildlife form part of the living sculpture. Here they co-exist with environmental artworks. We see it as one vast art installation. After all, art is place.
The Robert Adam Orangery is an imposing 500 year old bath stone building which was extended and improved by Robert Adam in the mid 1700’s. Today it hosts the Robert Adam salon gallery inside and on the terraces overlooking the sea and wilded Capability Brown gardens.
The Paris salon-style private gallery hosts a mix of contemporary artists in two beautiful private indoor rooms, including the extraordinary 35ft high dome room, and on two large terraces outside. The gallery houses some of the Letts family’s private collection as well as artworks from artists supported by DSP.
Artists include Tracey Emin, Chris Speyer, Teresa Wells, Terry Howe, Bev Knowlden, Colin Porter, Matt Dingle, Brendon Murless, Steve Carroll, Robert Marshall, Nicola Rigby and Philip Letts. Select artworks can be viewed at the RA Gallery Online.
The Robert Adam Orangery is one of the last historic Orangeries that is still lived in. The gallery rooms are private and can be viewed by invitation only.
We host live music and other cultural events at the Robert Adam Gallery.
‘Flux’ by Exeter’s Chris Speyer has opened in The Paddock. It is a powerful display of large-scale environmental ceramic sculptures by one of the South West’s leading ceramic sculptors.
In this triad of clay megaliths, ‘Fold’ and ‘Flow’ have undergone the irreversible metamorphosis of firing, clay transformed into enduring ceramic, but the third, ‘Ground’, which is being built here at Devon Sculpture Park from Bristol clay and local stones, will remain unfired, vulnerable to the elements, and allowed to weather back into the soil.
Chris’ environmentally inspired installation reminds us to be careful what we take out of the ground and that what we take out in the end finds its way back.
Chris has been a ceramicist for twenty years. His last six years have been focused on larger-scale sculptures. Chris exhibits in London and the South West.
There are smaller works from Chris Speyer also showing in The Robert Adam Gallery.
Devon Sculpture Park is a creative, rewilded retreat. Refresh and reimagine surrounded by art, Wilded Capability Brown gardens, ancient waterways, wildlife and endless sea views.
‘One of the most beautiful gardens I have seen…’ Toby Buckland, gardener, TV presenter and author.
This timeless, historic retreat has been carefully restored to enable visitors to deepen their creative energies. A recent visitor described it as ‘a place in perfect harmony’. A place where raw, primitive environmental art settles alongside thought provoking conceptual sculpture and edgy street art. Where art is place and the place is art. Where living sculpture can thrive.
View environmental art, visit the Wilded Capability Brown gardens, understand Rewilding and talk with artists. Wander the cascade gardens and take in the endless sea views. Relax from bench to bench. Reach back in time. Lean into your inner self.
You can settle in at The Terraces for slow cooked, healthy cooking with relaxed, informal service.
Come to this extraordinary retreat to rest or sketch. Relax and write. Ponder or perform. Meditate or mediate. Design or draw. Film or photograph. Invent, co-create, make or simply reconnect. Find it here, Rewild yourself. Creatively retreat.
Companies, charities and public sector bodies can retreat for a day starting at £35 per person including room hire, lunch and refreshments plus access to the art exhibitions and Wilded Capability Brown gardens. To enquire about company retreats contact hello@devonsculpturepark.org.
A secret discovered in the heart of Devon.
Art in the Devon Sculpture Park
Rosemary Cieri, Art Historian and Exhibition Curator
—
Arrived in this remote part of England – perhaps one of the most scenic I have seen- I proceeded to my assignment: A report on an exhibition of the latest art concerned with our most immediate problems: the destruction of our nature, our world, and our divine right to inhabit it.
This happened to be in the Devon Sculpture Park, 100 acres unknown to me, in perhaps the most beautiful part of Devon I have seen; with hills gently rolling down to the mouth of the River Exe and the open sea. A centre of rewilding, the new way to look after trees, plants, grasses and animals, who all live here in blissful harmony.
I discovered the impacting art of an artist, Philip Letts, English but known throughout the world (from New York to Beirut) for his groundbreaking art, progressive, but full of human history, of humanity faced with today’s problems. In a series of installations with paintings, sculpture, worked out with metal… we see animals alive and as skeletons, these last produced by man and industry’s impact on the natural world they need to survive.
Some of these installations shown here made me face problems until now partly ignored, but which made me think like Rodin’s “The Thinker” sitting and reflecting on our world. On leaving I saw similar types of sculptures scattered throughout the Devon Sculpture Park which, like me, were reflecting on our present dilemmas. Enhancement, vitality and energy stems from Philip Letts’ art, an art provocative, enlightening, as art should be and above all inspiring.
Devon Sculpture Park is on a mission. Not only is it developing one of the UK’s more ambitious sculpture parks, on a truly historic estate, but it is becoming a leading voice in tackling climate change.
Its permanent art collection is one of the UK’s larger collections of environmental art – sculpture, installation art and more. It includes a ground breaking 5 acre installation of 25 massive wood biodomes each housing hundreds of creatures while overwintering butterflies and bees, yielding sizable colonies of each.
The sculpture park has dedicated its outdoor and indoor galleries to exhibitions that challenge our thinking around man versus environment and community.
As if this was not enough the sculpture park sits on a hundred acre Rewilding Project. Six years in, this initiative has enabled nature to repair and renew the land, its wildlife and those of us lucky enough to wander through. The wildflower laden parkland with golden grasses shimmering in the sunlight remind us of bygone times. The ancient woodland glades and open scrubland foster vital biodiversity and protect wildlife, insect and birdlife. The Wilded verges are a simple demonstration of how any verge could be kept. This place is an eco-safari park right on our doorstep.
The Capability Brown gardens are one of the first historic gardens in the UK to be truly Wilded following a painstaking four year restoration. They showcase how we could make a difference in our own back yard no matter the size. The gardens lead the way on smaller scale, mass market, natural climate solutions.
The art challenges and provokes us while the Rewilding Project helps to educate us on how such natural climate solutions can save our planet – if we get behind them fast.
The education opportunities at Devon Sculpture Park are far-reaching. Children, parents, adults, researchers and activists all learn here – through the art, the gardens, the guided park tours and the events.
A day out at such a unique place not only helps support the wonderful estate and its content rich, highly topical art programme, but it allows us to get involved in solving our largest shared problem: saving the planet, its unique biodiversity and our very way of life.
Book a Group or School visit by contacting hello@devonsculpturepark.org. Volunteer at the park or simply start your climate journey by joining a 2 hour guided Wilding Tour – CLICK HERE.
At Devon Sculpture Park we pride ourselves in our guided art tours. We believe in interactive, human led art education.
The art tours take in not only the exhibitions of environmental art in the wilded Capability Brown gardens, but also hidden private collections in the outer wildlands. Indeed, the private collection in the outer wildlands can only be visited by joining a guided art tour.
Visit our famed installation of 25 wildlife biodomes across 5 acres of the parkland. Each is designed to house 200-300 creatures and overwinter butterflies and bees. Truly functional environmental art.
Observe art wilded in the UK’s leading smaller scale rewilding project. Nature, wildlife and art fuse into one massive 100 acre installation.
Following this you visit the main environmental art installations in the Capability Brown gardens and the two indoor galleries.
Last of all enjoy a complementary tea and cake at the terraces in front of the Robert Adam Orangery.
The guided art tours are led by artists and are available Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning, 10am – 12pm. To book a Guided Art Tour – CLICK HERE.
Devon Sculpture Park’s new indoor exhibition space at The Sheds opened on Saturday 29th June with ‘Textures’, a mixed media show of resident artist Philip Letts latest works.
‘Textures’ is a layered combination of mixed media art that challenges us to reflect on ourselves, our environment and the issues that surround us.
Each piece is a theatrical, layered examination of modern challenges including climate change, urbanisation, commercialisation and waste. The art speaks for itself behaving as an emotional mirror for us to reflect on and in.
‘Textures’ is a series of resident artist Letts’ most recent works. The collection fuses sculpture with tones of rugged street art rubbing against metal, plastics, textile, bone and wood.
Each artwork behaves as a mini installation. Theatrical, performant, conceptual but always raw, challenging us to think about our impact on the environment and community surrounding us. Are we materialist and selfish? Or more open and caring. We can decide.
Philip Letts is a recognised international artist. He has been represented at most of the leading art fairs around the world and has had a number of solo exhibitions in major galleries in New York, London, Paris and Beirut. He is collected widely.
Philip is passionate about large, global projects that challenge convention and attempt to design groundbreaking solutions to social, environmental and market issues. He is also the founder of Devon Sculpture Park.