International Sculpture Day 2026

The galleries at Dora House are currently closed for building works to deliver our project, Creating a Home for Sculptors but during this period, the sculpture terrace continues to feature contemporary sculpture and we are also running a series of Zoom-based talks and discussions around various aspects of sculpture and the lives of sculptors.

To mark International Sculpture Day 2026, we have organised a panel discussion that will explore the positive impact of artist residencies with a particular focus on mid-career artists. The panel will be chaired by Matthias Persson Artist Residencies Director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation who is also a practising artists. We are delighted to also welcome Julian Wild FRSS who recently completed a residency at Thread in Sinthian, Senegal, in partnership with the Albers Foundation in 2023 and Susie MacMurray FRSS who was artist in residence at The Hugo Burge Foundation in the Scottish Borders in 2024.

The topic of residencies is particularly relevant to us in 2026 as we celebrate the Year of the Home marking 50 years since the Society moved into Dora House thanks to the generosity of Cecil Thomas CBE FRBS who bequeathed it to us in the 1970s. As part of the Creating a Home for Sculptors works, a self-contained apartment will be built in our basement so that we can host artists in residence here at Dora House from late 2026.

About the speakers

Matthias Vico Persson (known professionally as Vico Persson) is a visual artist and cultural organizer based between Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. He works with recycled and found materials -- discarded packaging, recycled plastic, wood, clay, and paint -- to create two- and three-dimensional assemblage works. His practice engages play, transformation, and abstraction, reworking discarded materials as carriers of renewed possibilities. Persson has shown works internationally in venues such as Villa Empain in Brussels and Fuse NDSM in Amsterdam. Trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Dutch Art Institute, Persson has curated exhibitions, written for art publications, contributed to major exhibition designs including Anni Albers: Touching Vision at the Guggenheim Museum, and led workshops in museums, academies, and social institutions. He is currently Director of the Artist Residency Program at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.

Susie MacMurray FRSS is a British artist whose work includes drawing, sculpture and architectural installations. A former classical musician, she retrained as an artist, establishing an international exhibition profile, showing regularly in the USA and Europe as well as the UK. Working in installation and sculpture she has gained a reputation for poetic site-specific interventions in historic spaces. An intimate engagement with materials is at the heart of MacMurray’s practice. Her role is one of alchemist: combining material, form and context in deceptively simple ways.MacMurray is represented by the sculpture gallery Pangolin London.

Julian Wild FRSS creates playful sculptures based on cartoon-like events. His sculptures contain narratives that reference the human condition. Actions like crushing and bending turn hard materials into semi-figurative forms that suggest states such as subjugation, bravery and exhaustion. Colour is central to his practice, working with a palette from the built environment that signify objects as diverse as a modernist sculpture to a JCB. Wild has held Solo exhibitions at Modern Forms, Gurr Johns, Leighton House Museum, Modern Art Oxford and William Benington Gallery whilst taking part in group exhibitions including Beyond Limits at Chatsworth House, Sculpture in the City, Canary Wharf, The Fine Art Society and V22 London.