Sculpture has come a long way since the stone statues of old, writes Michael Johns – just check out Fresh Air 2009 for proof of that

I t's not easy to sell the idea that sculpture is fun to generations whose only experience of it in child- hood was grimy statues of Victorian MPs in the town square and solemn marble figures of men and women with no clothes on in the municipal art gallery.

In truth, there was probably some entertainment value in the latter – but you laughed at them at your peril.

Everything has lightened up a lot since then, and eyecatching statues, sculptures and assemblages make their appearance ever more frequently in our towns and cities, either on a temporary or permanent basis.

But what's different again is the barrage on the senses we have now learned to expect every other year at the riverside garden of Quenington Old Rectory, in a Cotswold village near Cirencester that's on the road to nowhere and so is as quiet and secluded as all such communities were meant to be.

The work of some 90 artists in Fresh Air 2009 is spread over five or so acres, with a surprise around every corner – not least because one in three of those exhibiting has not been seen at this show before.

Perhaps most striking is the variety of materials used, from the bronze, steel, wood, glass and ceramics you might expect to cement, mosaic, resin, textiles, frescoes, ironwork, rubber, brick, water, perspex, willow, slate, Astroturf, scrap metal and sound, as well as multi-media installations.

"We aim to give a wide range of artists a chance to show outside, in a private setting," says organiser Lucy Abel Smith, who has lived at the Old Rectory with her industrialist husband David for some 20 years, and has been putting on the biennial exhibition for more than half that time.

"It's very different from an urban gallery or public art, and I think people like the sense of being able to wander physically, intellectually and visually and discover the work for themselves. It gives pleasure and a kind of freedom."

Among a host of international names are a good number from this part of the world whose reputation also spreads far and wide.

The late superstar sculptor Lynn Chadwick, who lived near Stroud, is represented, as is his follower Anthony Abrahams, whose stark, angular figures are cast at the Pangolin art foundry at Chalford.

Colin Hawkins, of Loco Glass in Cirencester, is another artist on the doorstep whose output goes around the world, as does the studio glass of Sally Fawkes, a denizen of that arty valley between Stroud and Chalford.

For sheer colour, though in vastly contrasting styles, Robert Bradford's collage of plastic toys vies with the brilliant mosaics of Candace Bahouth, a New Yorker of Italian-Lebanese descent who, for 30 years, has been at home in a small village in the Somerset countryside.

Exhibiting work with prices ranging from £50 up to £12,000, with one or two specials at up to £35,000, Fresh Air 2009 runs from June 14 to July 5, 10am to 5pm daily. Admission is £2.50 for adults, and catalogues are £5.

Visit the website www.freshair2009.com for more information.