Show of strength: Scottish artist's wooden sculptures at beautiful Château de Seneffe

Left to ruin for decades, the 18th-century Château de Seneffe, after 20 years of meticulous restoration at a cost of €3m, is an outstanding monument - with not only one of Europe's premier silverware collection but also a theatre, an orangerie, an aviary, 55 acres of beech woods, a parc à l'anglaise, a jardin à la française and a pond with a romantic island and bridge.

All of those assets make it a perfect choice for a lovely day's outing but it is also a setting for contemporary art exhibitions and welcomes Scottish artist Aeneas Wilder's solo show Origin until November. Taking advantage of the property's varied perspectives and assets, Wilder has created a number of his signature structures for the show, presented as a meditation on the life and death cycle.

Among the sculptures is an 11m sphere constructed from 600 pieces of timber held together with 24cm screws. "The sphere represents many things to many people but to me it represents the self," says Wilder. "I like to work with spherical structures. The overarching theme, beyond life and death is fragility. This sphere is not very fragile, in fact it's very structurally sound but it looks fragile."

There is also a high chair of 12m: "This is a very simple piece, it's just a tower made of stacked units of wood and at the top there is a chair. It's fixed and has a foundation but again, I'm trying to get a sense of fragility."

Japanese influence

Wider spends half the year in northern Japan. He says: "I've been trying to avoid Japan affecting my work for about 18 years but for the last year I decided to make something that very much comes out of Japan with this kind of wooden style that they have with straight lines and so on."

The result is five cubic units inspired by Orwell's 1984. "I tried to make small rooms with a sliding door and Japanese tatami-like mats. Each unit will house one object of art made by a person I knew but has subsequently died. One piece is by Dutch artist Paul Panhuysen. It's a box with a solar panel which, if the sun shines plays Happy Birthday, but obviously when it's not sunny the panel still picks up light so on a dull day Happy Birthday comes out woouh, woouh, woouh."

Even more deeply reflecting Japan are the four video pieces running in the château's cellars. "I thought OK, now is the year when I record just the ordinary things I see, though by presenting this work here in Belgium it won't look ordinary to European visitors," Wilder adds.

And finally, there is a flower labyrinth: "It's made of wild flowers which will continue growing and changing, different flowers will come up at different times of the year between now and November."

Origin by Aeneas Wilder, Château de Seneffe, June 5 to November 13. Photo courtesy Kristof Vrancken/Z33