Outdoor art in Britain

Tresco, Isles of Scilly

Where would you like to view the latest paintings of the Isles of Scilly? On a trademark curl of white sand? From a serene hilltop gazing across bucolic perfection to a dancing sea? How about the wall of a tiny picture postcard harbour, or among lush foliage in one of the world’s most famous botanical gardens?

It’s your choice. A new summer exhibition on Tresco has transformed the privately owned island into a vast al fresco gallery. Four super sized acrylic and oil artworks, all with widescreen big sky panoramas, will be displayed in the exact location they were painted earlier this summer, showcasing Tresco’s startling diversity and extraordinary beauty.

Fifty great day out in the UK

The dramatic 2m x 2.5m paintings are the work of Anthony Garratt, who developed the concept after working outside on a blustery day in the Black Mountains. "It was cruelly windy," he recalls. "I thought this is part of the experience; it’s part of the painting. We should transmit that to people rather than taking it into the controlled environment of a gallery. You rarely, if ever, see a painting where it was actually created."

While visitors might view the landscapes in a warm sunny breeze, the visually explosive, expressionist works portray each scene in diverse weather, reflecting the wild winter days Garratt has spent on the island. "Weather changes everything," he says. "The light, the mood, the whole lot. It’s very thought provoking to see several different skies in one painting."

^{A painting by Anthony Garratt}

To resist any unseasonal Atlantic blasts, the paintings – on marine plywood, coated with UV varnish – sit on heavy-duty steel easels designed by architects and built by shipwrights. Garratt, who intends this to be the start of a trail of 'in situ’ works throughout Britain, has also written a musical score to accompany a film of their creation.

The outdoor displays are temporary additions to Tresco’s impressive art collection, fuelled by the private passion of the island’s owner, Robert Dorrien-Smith and wife, Lucy. As well as sculptures by Tom Leaper and David Wynne, Tresco’s cottages and restaurants sport paintings by famous artists with a link to the region from the late 19th and the 20th centuries, including Graham Sutherland, Sir Terry Frost and Dame Laura Knight, along with Ivon Hitchens, Dame Barbara Hepworth and Roger Hilton.

Skybus (0845 710 5555, islesofscilly-travel.co.uk) flies to neighbouring St Mary’s from Land’s End and Newquay from £140 return, and from Exeter (March to October) from £255 return. Ferry to Tresco costs £8.50 (01720 423999, scillyboating.co.uk). Information (01720 422849, tresco.co.uk). Stay at Sea Garden Cottages (01720 422849, tresco.co.uk) where cottages sleeping six cost from £1,615 per week.

Britain's best beach cafes and restaurants

Kielder Forest, Northumberland

Prepare to contemplate the vastness of the universe – and the gloriously empty, untainted countryside of Northumberland — when you visit the latest attraction in the county’s Kielder Water and Forest Park. The Star Gazing pavilion, designed and built by architecture students at Newcastle University, opened last month in a flower-filled meadow near Stonehaugh, celebrating the area’s recent designation as an international dark sky park.

The skeletal wood circle, beautiful in its clean simplicity, is an easy drive, or taxing hike, from the hugely enjoyable 27-mile trail of art and architecture encircling Northern Europe’s largest man-made lake. The route’s strange and wonderful creations, tucked into 250 square miles of forest near the border with Scotland, include Minotaur, a linear maze of wire and rock walls surrounding a room of glittering green glass beneath Kielder Castle.

Britain's best ice cream

You can also walk into the mouth and gaze out through the eyes of a giant timber head, Silvas Capitalis (its creators claim you are entering the mind of the forest’s silent observer). Or step inside Belvedere, a stainless steel shelter resembling an alien in a 1950s sci-fi movie, which reflects its surroundings in constantly changing weather. Or enter the Wave Chamber, a beehive shaped, dry stone camera obscura. It makes visitors feel they’re standing on rippling liquid by projecting images of the lake onto the floor.

^{Art in Kielder Forest}

On more solid ground, walkers can rest in the Janus Chairs, three super sized rotating steel and wood seats resembling opening flower petals, before visiting the Salmon Cubes, a series of sculptures inspired by the River Tyne’s tastiest fish. Many families head to Bull Crag Peninsula in the south of the lake where a trail of bronze rubbing plaques is dotted along a two-mile loop.

Britain's 20 best beaches

Alternatively, taking inspiration from the new star gazing pavilion, visitors’ eyes can stay firmly anchored on the heavens. The famous observatory, a couple of miles from the lake’s north tip, sits next to Cat Cairn, where internationally renowned artist, James Turrell, manipulates our perceptions of light and space in a partially buried circular room, with a ceiling hole open to the sky and passing clouds.

Entry free, parking £4 per day (0845 155 0236, kielderartandarchitecture.com). Stay in one of the superbly equipped Scandinavian style lodges at Leaplish Waterside Park (01434 251000, visitkielder.com) where a four-person cabin costs from £379 per week, £265 for a three-night weekend.

^{The star gazing pavillion at Stonehaugh in The Keilder Forest}

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Nr Wakefield

This is your chance to witness the return of a global star. The current exhibition of works by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, his first in a British public gallery since Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern in 2010, occupies the courtyard and interior of the Park’s newly renovated chapel.

Iron Tree, a striking six-metre tall outdoor work, interlocks 99 iron casts of branches, roots and trunks from different trees with an exaggerated Chinese engineering technique of prominent nuts and bolts. The sculpture is intended to rust over time as a powerful symbol of the cycle of nature.

Ai Weiwei, who is banned from travel outside China so worked from photographs and architectural plans of the 18th century chapel, is also exhibiting four pieces indoors reflecting on freedom and the individual in society. They include a marble lantern – a nod to the red lanterns with which he has decorated state surveillance cameras outside his home, and will be accompanied by readings from works by his father, the poet Ai Qing.

Britain's best outdoor theatres and cinemas

The 500-acres of fields, hills and woodland, interspersed with lakes and formal gardens, that link Wakefield and Barnsley, are also the stage for the first large scale European exhibition by acclaimed American artist, Ursula von Rydingsvard. Over forty of her drawings and sculptures, most forged from her trademark cedar beams, are exhibited in the underground gallery and outdoors, including Bowl with Lace, currently greeting visitors at the park entrance, a new six-metre high bronze cast, crowned with filigree and lit from within to suggest a glowing ember.

This summer also sees the opening of a monumental sculpture, Large Owl, by California-based Thomas Houseago. The massive bronze head on a redwood plinth, echoing the symbol of his birthplace, Leeds, joins the outstanding display at Europe’s largest sculpture park, which has recently been named Art Fund Museum of the Year.

Entry free, parking: from £5 for two hours, all-day £8. Open daily 10am - 6pm (01924 832631, www.ysp.co.uk). Stay in The Three Acres (01484 602606, 3acres.com), a turn of the century drover’s inn with decent food and B&B doubles from £125.

Cass Sculpture Foundation, West Sussex

It’s unlike any bathroom you’ve seen before. Contemporary artist Gary Webb has playfully blended aluminium and bronze with car paint and lacquer to create an eye-popping multicoloured installation of fixtures, fittings and soaps, potions and lotions. As the Cass Sculpture Foundation’s latest commission, Dreamy Bathroom makes a striking addition to the collection of works sprinkled across 26 acres of gloriously verdant, rolling woodland in the heart of the South Downs National Park.

^{Eva Rothschild's 'Nature And Culture'. Photo: Eve Rothschild, and Cass Sculpture Foundation}

Webb’s highly photogenic creation isn’t the only new feature in the Foundation’s chunk of West Sussex countryside. It is joined by Brazilian-American artist, Juliana Cerqueira Leile’s high impact, tactile Climb, a loaned abstract work of foam and steel. Also on temporary display is the mesmerizing Nature and Culture by Irish-born Eva Rothschild, whose sculptures have graced Tate Britain — a huge tangled yet linear web of black aluminium which plays with visual perceptions. Michael Joo’s Doppelganger, another loan, is a dazzling zebra, ears aloft, head turned and dripping with pink enamel paint; it’s cast in bronze from the mould of an earlier sculpture, based on a painting by George Stubbs.

Britain's best lidos and outdoor pools

This summer you can also see Thomas Heatherwick’s recently restored 20th century folly, Pavilion. Working as a building, a piece of furniture and a sculpture, with a roof modeled on a derelict farm shed that twists down into translucent walls, it was previously displayed to dramatic effect next to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. It sits alongside other highly acclaimed sculptures including works by Tony Cragg, Danny Lane, Bill Woodrow and Diane Maclean.

Entry: Adults £12.50, Children £6.50; open daily 10.30am - 4.30pm (01243 538449, sculpture.org.uk). Stay in The Star and Garter (01243 811318, thestarandgarter.co.uk), an 18th century flint and brick pub with B&B doubles for £120

More contemporary sculpture in spectacular locations

Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail, Gloucestershire

This 4.5-mile trail through towering oaks and pines has 22 works inspired by the trees, wildlife and industrial past of the forest (forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk).

New Art Centre, Wiltshire

A sculpture park, gallery and educational centre set in the grounds of an early 19th century house with indoor and outdoor exhibits (sculpture.uk.com).

Grizedale Forest, Cumbria

Over 30 years the forest has become home to 50 permanently sited works from giant keys to super sized ferns and a concrete country stile (grizedalesculpture.org).

National Botanic Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire

Works by some of Wales’ leading contemporary sculptors are dotted around a slice of the 568 acres of parkland that contain the historic walled garden and Norman Foster’s futuristic Great Glasshouse (gardenofwales.org.uk).

Burghley House, Lincolnshire

The gorgeous Capability Brown designed grounds here include a sculpture park where permanent exhibits mingle with April-to-October exhibitions. Currently on show are works that respond to the elements, including delicate kinetic sculptures that appear and vanish in the breeze (burghley.co.uk).

Britain's best seaside hotels

^{Michael Joo's 'Doppelganger', at the Cass Sculpture Foundation. Photo: Michael Joo, and Cass Sculpture Foundation}

Win one of 40 holidays worth £800,000
Telegraph Travel Awards 2014: vote for your favourite destinations and travel companies for the chance to win one of 40 luxury breaks worth a total of £800,000.

Travel Guides app
Download the free Telegraph Travel app, featuring expert guides to destinations including Paris, Rome, New York, Venice and Amsterdam

Follow Telegraph Travel on Twitter
Follow Telegraph Travel on Facebook
Follow Telegraph Travel on Pinterest
Follow Telegraph Travel on FourSquare