Ooidonk Art Festival 2025

The pastoral Belgian landscape of the Leie region is the setting for the Ooidonk Art Festival, an annual summer event that celebrates contemporary art and nature. The event was launched four years ago by Arnaud Maere, the son of gallerist Francis Maere, whose Ghent-based gallery is specialised in Flemish art between 1880-1950, particularly of plein-air landscape painters, but also painters working in symbolism, expressionism surrealism and early abstraction. After COVID, Arnaud, an artist who also works at the gallery, felt there was an opportunity to connect art with everyone’s desire to be outdoors. “With this festival, we are diving into the contemporary art space and it is quite interesting to have both,” Arnaud explains. The festival takes place at the 17th-century farmstead ‘Goed Te Réables,’ located on the grounds of Ooidonk Castle. This lush and picturesque landscape was once a popular place for landscape painters to get inspired and create, and today, contemporary artists are doing the same – taking inspiration from the site’s heritage, the connection to their history and to the land.

The theme of the festival, which runs until August 31st, is ‘Nature-in-Flux’, a comment on both human’s impact on nature and vice versa. Nearly 40 artists have installed artwork across the property – both outside in the landscape as well as indoors, in the old buildings in the farmstead. “We love the idea of inviting artists and letting them be inspired by the location everything builds very organically from there. Some know the area really well while for other’s it is their first time and they excited to discover where to place their work,” says Arnaud.

Some of the pieces are site specific, “these are dear to my heart because we have been working together for a year developing the idea and making it all come together,” he says. Photographer Lieven Lefere built a décor where people can walk in and experience how he plays with light and shadow and really experience his creative universe; Isidoor Goddeeris built a small version of a gothic-style cathedral for honeybees. There is a live-stream inside that lets viewers watch the bees in action. Connected to the theme of the festival this year, ‘Nature in Flux’, Ruth Devriendt has installed her paintings into the ground and planted roots into them as well, so that over the summer things will grow and literally integrate with the landscape. Joachim Louis created a 6-metre high sculpture using a single 195-year old tree trunk. Its unique shape is inspired by the forms of stacked stones that hikers leave along the trails.

Other highlights include Pol Bury’s sculpture, Monument °7 dédié à l’érection et quelques autres mouvements (1971), two brass forms move extremely slowly in relation to each other, driven by an electric motor with wooden gears; Dutch artist Herman de Vries brings nature directly into the art world. In Change (2008), he presents two wooden blocks: one carved, the other charred, and Wim Delvoye presents Twisting Jesus, in which he has distorted a classical Jesus figure into a spiral shaped sculpture and installed it on a tree, leading to an unpredictability as to the sculpture’s future.

Throughout the run of Ooidonk Art Festival, a summer bar and pop up restaurant, Hay, by Garçon Catering, from Antwerp, brings delicious food and drinks to the setting as well. There will be special events throughout the summer including summer brunches and late openings, to allow visitors to experience the art and landscape by night. Concurrently with the outdoor festival, there will be an exhibition of the artists included in the art festival at the Ghent-based gallery of Francis Maere.

The Ooidonk Art Festival is open Thursday-Sunday, between 11:00 – 18:00, through August 31st Tickets are €10 per person at the entrance; free admission for children under 12.

Ooidonk Art Festival

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Francis Maere Gallery

@francismaeregallery