About
This exhibition marks the 10th anniversary of the award winning gallery at Roche Court. Designed by Stephen Marshall and opened in Autumn 1998, the gallery has since received six prestigious awards for its innovative design and construction. Inside / Outside celebrates the exceptional architecture of this gallery space and the successful partnership that has been forged with the art placed therein. The show includes works by Barbara Hepworth, Kenneth Armitage, Edmund de Waal and new commissions by Nina Saunders and James Hopkins.
The need for the gallery arose from the expansion of the sculpture park. It allowed the New Art Centre, in whose 60acre outdoor grounds sculpture was already being shown, to have an additional space in which work that needed to be protected from the elements could be displayed. There was the desire that here, as in the park, works should find themselves in dialogue with the landscape.
The gallery has been a fantastic addition to the New Art Cente, enabling us to put on a list of exhibitions, none of which could have been contemplated prior to its existence. In the ten years since it opened, the gallery has hosted a remarkable series of exhibitions, each one responding to the space with originality and vigour. The list of shows includes, Antony Gormley, Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Deacon, John Golding, Laura Ford, Barbara Hepworth, Richard Long, Henry Moore, Ian Stephenson, Phyllida Barlow and Gavin Turk.
After the success of the gallery, which won the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize for best small building, the American Institute of Architects Award for Excellence in Design, the Aluminium Award, the Royal Fine Art Commission Building of the Year Award (special commendation) and a Salisbury Civic Award, Stephen Marshall went on to design two further buildings at Roche Court. In 2004 the Artists' House was built which filled the remaining side of the courtyard at the back of Roche Court. This contemporary domestic space in which art and design are exhibited was joined in 2008 by the Courtyard Pavilion which extends the domestic side of the house itself.
