by Isobel Smart
From 6–9 August, Houghton Festival returned to the grounds of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, bringing together electronic music, contemporary art, and the landscape of one of England’s most celebrated sculpture parks. This year’s visual arts programme presented seven site-responsive commissions transforming the estate’s forests, lake, and open spaces into settings for sculpture, architecture, light, and performance.
Among this year’s commissions was a new work by British artist Ryan Gander OBE, his first for Houghton. Three enormous black PVC balloon sculptures - Do you smile in your sleep?, How far is a head start? and Is everything necessary? - appeared across the festival site, each featuring an absurd question in bold white lettering. The playful works continue Gander’s interest in imagination, learning and human perception through everyday objects and seemingly unanswerable questions.
Cella Collective came together with Mitre & Mondays to create Water Tower (above), a timber-and-thatch pavilion inspired by Norfolk’s waterways, reedbeds and vernacular building traditions. Constructed using sustainably harvested reed from Scottish RSPB reedbeds, the structure references Houghton Hall’s historic 1772 water tower. Designed as a place for gathering between the festival’s different sites, Water Tower is intended to remain as a permanent addition to the Houghton landscape, reassembled each year.
Henry Krokatsis’ Pedilavium (above) invited audiences to take part in the simple but unusual act of washing a stranger’s feet. Performed by 40 volunteers throughout the festival, the work considers humility, human connection and the conventions that shape everyday interactions.
Light once again played an important role across the grounds. Chris Levine returned with Full Beam (above), taking over the main lake with an expanded presentation centred on the chrome-plated VW camper van first seen in his 2025 installation. Extending across the site and into the night sky, the work creates a space for stillness within the energy of the festival. Levine’s Light is Love returned hidden in the forest, where projected images created a more intimate encounter with the work.
Also in the forest, Nicole Gordon and Ke Peng’s Contact Field (above) brought sculpture, light and reflection together. A suspended mirrored circle of rotating panels captures and redistributes a controlled beam of light, scattering reflections through the surrounding trees and haze. Shifting between sculpture, screen and optical instrument, the work makes the surrounding forest an integral part of the installation.
Artist and DJ Call Super presented The Kardashians, A Third Place, an open-air living room constructed from trees felled on the Houghton estate. Three carved thrones and two sofas face an imaginary television showing The Kardashians, creating a playful setting through which the work considers celebrity culture, consumerism and the decline of communal ‘third places’.
Alongside these commissions, creative director Craig Richards continued to develop Houghton’s visual landscape with new metal sculptures placed throughout the festival site.
Set among the trees, lake and sculpture park of Houghton Hall, the festival offers a setting in which artworks are encountered alongside the music and as part of the landscape itself. Since its founding in 2017, Houghton has continued to bring together music and visual art across the historic Norfolk estate, with the two programmes becoming increasingly intertwined each year.
all images courtesy Houghton / Khroma Collective
