SCULPTURE GARDEN

Artworks in the Gardens of Le Rivau,
in Dialogue with the Château’s Collections

Built during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Le Rivau Castle is set within a six-hectare park that has been awarded the prestigious Remarkable Garden label since 2003. Across fifteen themed gardens, visitors encounter the spirit of wonder and enchantment so deeply cherished in medieval times.

A true open-air museum, the park has been designed since 1995 by Patricia Laigneau. It recalls medieval pleasure gardens, where unexpected sculptures combined courtly love with surprise and delight. Conceived as a prelude to the vast cabinet of curiosities housed within the château, the artworks scattered throughout the gardens engage and surprise visitors at every turn.

Wonder—the essential ingredient of medieval gardens—is reinterpreted here with both irony and poetry. Drawing on the imagery of fairy tales and legends, the artworks revisit familiar symbols while encouraging reflection on contemporary issues such as environmental stewardship and biodiversity conservation.

An Artistic and Playful Journey

As soon as visitors pass through the Renaissance gateway leading into the château’s outer courtyard, they are greeted by Taupologie (2011), a monumental bronze mole created by Ghyslain Bertholon. Emerging seemingly from the depths of the earth beside Gargantua’s Kitchen Garden, this oversized creature offers an unexpected welcome. Moles are not usually gardeners’ best friends, yet here it greets visitors entering Le Rivau’s world of wonder. It also evokes the underground passages that once connected Le Rivau to the Fortress of Chinon.

Nearby stands Old Woman Shoe (2009), a monumental work by the American artist Amy O’Neill (on loan from the French National Centre for Visual Arts as part of its support programme for contemporary art). This striking sculpture delights both children and adults alike. Children can take shelter inside the oversized shoe, while adults may recognise its reference to a famous English nursery rhyme where magical objects and extraordinary powers bring enchantment to everyday life.

Floating on the footbath pool is Novel for Life (2003), a ceramic installation by Fabien Verschaere. In contrast to the monumentality of the surrounding works, its miniature scale invites closer observation. A princess, an enchanted castle, a teddy bear, a duck, a comfort blanket and even a vanitas motif intertwine in a whimsical universe where childhood dreams meet the artist’s delightfully eccentric imagination.

Also in the forecourt, formerly known as the cour des servitudes, Pierre Ardouvin’s installation Encore et toujours (2009) offers a fresh take on the fantastical. An inaccessible carousel, symbolising at first glance children’s first enchanted journey and the whirlwind caused by this adventure. On closer inspection, the artist seems to be telling us that these dreams shatter in adulthood, as evoked by the broken mirror on the floor of the installation, which reflects the shattered image of the castle.

As they leave the courtyard of the outbuildings, visitors come across Céline Turpin’s La Ronde (2009). Reminiscent of magical objects, imbued with the wonder embodied in the world of fairy tales and legends, this ceramic necklace—worthy of adorning the neck of the fairest of princesses—is worn by an old tree scarred by the storms of harsh winters. Like the protective amulets of the forest trees, it confers neither invincibility nor invisibility; it merely recalls the power of magical objects to transform the ordinary into the marvellous.

Looking up, our visitors are surprised to discover a large monkey suspended in the chestnut tree. This is Elodie Antoine’s The Sloth (2015). This mammal, which lives suspended in the branches of trees, moves very slowly and sleeps a great deal. With humour, the Belgian artist invites us to respect biodiversity and to safeguard endangered species.

As we enter the Verger de Paradis, we come across a rockery hut! The rockery, an art form that was all the rage in 19th-century historic gardens, inspired the artist Julien des Monstiers. The magical world of Le Rivau simply had to have a hut, just like in any fairy tale. Remember the magical hut in Hansel and Gretel ! The dreamlike atmosphere evoked by an abandoned hut amidst the trees fades as we draw nearer. One of the sides appears to be a shipping container ! Julien des Monstiers blurs the boundaries between two realms of the imagination: the fairy tale and the real world, with its containers transporting manufactured goods—symbols of globalisation—far removed from the artisanal practices of yesteryear.
As they draw nearer, the viewer discovers, through the peepholes cut into the door, the colourful and lyrical frescoes—at first glance alluring—painted by the artist, revealing the beautiful surrounding countryside. The unique technique, in which the painter’s orange and blue colours intermingle, also tells the story inside the hut of the giant jigsaw puzzle that is today’s world, where past and modernity overlap until they cancel each other out.

Further into the gardens, some unexpected sculptures

Amidst the trees of the orchard, visitors come across Unsold – boots (2008) by the artist Lilian Bourgeat. Two oversized boots catch the visitor’s eye with their sheer scale. The surprise reaches its peak when the visitor discovers that they are two left feet! According to the artist, the two feet were left unsold in a shop for giants. Lilian Bourgeat’s work invites the visitor to reflect on the question of the usefulness of consumer objects. Do objects have a soul ?

In the heart of the Petit Poucet garden, visitors come across a bronze sculpture. Stefan Nikolaev has erected a commemorative ‘Monument’ to the coyote from the famous cartoon (Wile E. Coyote in English). Thus, with this work I liked America and America liked me (2013), Stefan Nikolaev reinterprets the character of Joseph Beuys, a great German artist always dressed in a felt coat and carrying a walking stick. Beuys, a champion of nature, had locked himself away with a coyote to demonstrate that nature was not aggressive. Stefan Nikolaev draws a humorous analogy between the artist’s persona and the cartoon character.

A forest inhabited by works of art

At the edge of the Enchanted Forest, we pass Claude Pasquer’s Iron Dragon. Then, looking up at the sky, we discover Paul Rouillac’s mobile The Seven Dwarfs (2011). The artist sets elves dancing, flushed with the joy of twirling as they hang from their mobile above visitors’ heads, at the same height as the birds. On the ground, we spot Les grands hommes by the artist Claude Le Poète. These ceramic sculptures, behind their naïve appearances, ironically depict the heroes of the media : politicians…

On leaving the Enchanted Forest, Lilian Bourgeat’s Vaisseau de jardin (2006) intrigues. The artist delights in enlarging the most mundane objects of our daily lives. Elevated to an XXL scale, they now emerge from their anonymity to become ‘Extraordinary Objects’, much like the magical objects of fairy tales.

Directly opposite, the Alice in Rivau Country maze attracts young and old alike, especially as the two-dimensional sculptures created by Jean-Jack Martin at the entrance resemble soldier-gardeners. They transport us, like Alice, into a wonderful world. Thus, with modesty and talent, the artist brings to life the figures inspired by John Tenniel’s original illustrations.

As we walk on, we spot some strange figures lining the avenue of chestnut trees. Le Rivau also invites folk artists to express themselves. Here, Les gardiens were created on site, using trees felled by the 1999 storm. It is a way of immortalising them.

A little further on, the park’s oldest oak is adorned with Philippe Ramette’s Piercing (2003). At first glance, a piece of jewellery in a tree might seem absurd, but through a mysterious alchemy, the sculpture and the old tree enhance one another.

Sculptures rooted in poetry

The Rivau Gardens are also renowned for their poetic atmosphere. Set before the vegetal oculus and its remarkable view of the Château du Rivau, Le Kiss —two sculptures evoking a kiss and love, created by the artist Laurent Pernot— complete this escape into a dreamlike world.

As the path winds its way through the tall lime and hornbeam trees, five large pairs of legs can be seen, seeming to be moved by the wind. This is La Forêt qui court (1998) by Jérôme Basserode. An iconic feature of the Rivau gardens, this impressive installation raises the question of humanity’s future within nature. Or, indeed, the future of the forest, so often destroyed by humanity.

On the edge of the forest, overlooking the cultivated fields, stands Jean-Luc Bichaud’s Le nid (1996). At first glance, it appears to be a rather ordinary, oversized nest. But, covered in millet seeds—the favourite food of caged birds—this shelter takes on a different meaning: ensuring the protection of our countryside’s birds in a landscape that has often lost its hedgerows, the refuges of our winged friends.

A little further on, a surprising mosaic sculpture that seems to carry on the tradition of recumbent figures. Two sleeping bodies hold hands, covered by a shimmering veil of flowers. How lush this mosaic fabric is, with a few bees coming to forage, as if to illustrate the cycle of life or that life goes on, towards the eternal joy of Paradise. This is La rose est sans pourquoi (2024) by Lionel Estève. This monumental work pays homage to the poem by Angelus Silesius (1624–1667) and to Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.

As we make our way back down towards the Allée des Senteurs, we are struck by an oversized sake cup. Nicole Tran Ba Vang’s work Après la pluie (2004) takes up the form and concept of the traditional sake cup, those cups intended for Japanese men where the base is adorned with an erotic image. Added to the pleasure of surprise is the notion of voyeurism, as if forbidden things were all the more alluring.

An open-air museum

After these wanderings through childhood and the realm of the fantastical, visitors to Le Rivau come across Jean-Pierre Raynaud’s monumental Pot rouge. The ordinary pot is here magnified by its sheer size and colour. And one might well ask: why has it been encased in concrete, as if the artist had condemned this pot to never serve as a flowerpot ?

At the end of the Chemin des Fées stands Dominique Bailly’s La Tour du Bois Dormant. Shaped like the roof of the castle’s pepper-pot towers, this plant-based work (it is covered in vine shoots) recreates the fourth tower that once closed off the castle’s quadrangle.

On leaving, be sure to hang your own wish—such as a wish to return to Le Rivau—on Leslie O’Meara’s Wishing Tree (2017).

Another surprise : upon arriving beneath the gatehouse at the castle entrance, Pierre Ardouvin has managed to transform two ordinary garden wheelbarrows, with tyres fitted, into human figures. With Debout (2005), Pierre Ardouvin transforms utilitarian objects into figures with a dual purpose, oscillating between the dream and the pessimism inherent in the human condition : to greet visitors and to evoke the work required to maintain a monument and its gardens.

Upon entering the stately courtyard, the surprise continues with Xenomorph (Loire), a large sculpture of a Xenopus laevis frog (a species widely used in scientific research) created from waste collected from the Loire. This work is part of a series of frog sculptures made from waste sourced from major urban rivers, such as the Seine in Paris, the Los Angeles River, the East River in New York and now the Loire.
The American artist Bryan Crockett is fascinated by the fact that frogs have no barrier between their bodies and their environment. Frogs breathe through their skin, making them highly sensitive to pollution and environmental changes. By creating these oversized frog sculptures, Bryan Crockett aims to convey the idea that, like the frog, we too are affected by the contamination of the surrounding waters.