Flo Horswell - Founder & Director, The Sculpture Walk

After forty-seven art fairs on the gallery side, I had developed a particular frustration. Sculpture was so often used to decorate the aisles, when I felt it deserved rather more attention. I wanted to bring it forward, to give it context and, above all, to start a conversation. It was the directors of Treasure House Fair who generously allowed me to put that frustration to good use and who trusted me to run with a variety of ideas in 2025, which had never been done before at an art fair.

I had originally imagined perhaps ten works. We ended up with twenty-seven. By the following year, there were thirty-seven. I wondered, quietly, whether I had rather over-talked the whole thing, but the enthusiasm of the participating galleries, independent artists and estates was extraordinary.

What interested me most was the opportunity to bring these different worlds together. Leading international galleries, with their remarkable knowledge and historic works, could stand alongside independent artists making sculpture in studios today. Neither diminished the other. Quite the opposite.

I have always been a great supporter of galleries, after all I directed one for twenty-five years and that gallery is still run by the descendants of the original family today. Their scholarship, experience and commitment to the artists they represent are essential to the art world. But I also believe that independent artists have much to contribute, and that creating opportunities for both to be seen and appreciated together makes the experience infinitely richer.

Sculpture is, I would argue, one of the most complex art forms to collect. There are editions, casts, materials, foundries and sometimes generations of history to consider. Understanding these things takes years of looking, handling and learning from the people who know. And that, to my mind, is precisely the pleasure of it. The Sculpture Walk was never intended simply to be a route through an exhibition. I wanted visitors to encounter works they might otherwise have passed by, to meet the people who understood or created them, and perhaps to discover something that would begin a lifelong interest.

I also wanted that experience to continue beyond the physical exhibition.Through our podcasts, filmed conversations, digital catalogues and original content, the Walk has developed a life of its own. Visitors can continue exploring an artist's work long after leaving the exhibition, while collectors can discover the stories and expertise behind the pieces that captured their imagination. The programme has also welcomed children discovering sculpture for the first time, corporate groups looking at art from different perspectives, and returning visitors who have found that a second encounter can reveal something entirely new.

Increasingly, I am interested in the relationship between art and place. Sculpture can transform a garden, lend meaning to an architectural setting or make us reconsider a familiar landscape. Our collaboration with painter Tom Hughes and Chelsea Physic Garden in 2026 was a particularly rewarding opportunity to explore that relationship. It was important to me in particular to connect a ‘temporary’ exhibition to it’s place and Tom’s work allowed us to create ‘place making’ within the walk itself.

My ambition is for the Sculpture Walk to continue developing beyond the setting in which it began. I would love to see it in historic houses, gardens and other extraordinary spaces, with exhibitions that last long enough to become part of the cultural life of a place. I have already adored the friendships and lasting collaborations which have spun out of this creation, directly between artists themselves and with larger brands and communities.

I also hope that, with the right partnerships and sponsorship, we might eventually establish opportunities for independent artists whose ambitions are limited not by talent or imagination, but by the considerable costs of making, casting and transporting sculpture.

I remain enormously grateful to Treasure House Fair for hosting our first two editions at the Royal Hospital Chelsea and to the Hospital itself for allowing their view to be transformed by them, and to the galleries, artists, estates, curators and collaborators who placed their trust in the project.

After so many years in the sculpture world, I still find myself surprised, delighted and occasionally rather awestruck by what artists create and by what sculpture can do. Sculpture is definitely having it’s moment, with debates ranging about recent public sculpture and even a guest appearance of Nicole Kidman at Christies. However, sculpture has always carried weight in the human story, in both senses of the word. The medium has never truly been absent. It has simply, at certain moments, waited to be rediscovered.

I hope the Sculpture Walk can play its part in that rediscovery.

Flo Horswell

Founder and Director, The Sculpture Walk