Striking contemporary art, with echoes from the past, has been installed at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal water garden.

Visitors to the 800-acre UNESCO World Heritage site, will see a visual transformation, brought about through the work of Steve Messam.

His three thought-provoking installations titled These Passing Things, have been designed to prompt another way of looking at landscape and historic buildings.

Drifted - 12 Floating pyramids in the canal – takes its inspiration from a lost pyramid folly, designed as a memorial monument to honour John Aislabie, the original designer of the water garden.

Following Aislabie's death, in June 1742, his son William commissioned a 16-metre-high funerary pyramid.

However, despite archive records of scale drawings and detailed costings for the piece, no further mentions of it were ever made and no record or evidence exists of this mysterious pyramid ever being built

Mr Messam's second artwork is Bridged – a scarlet contemporary bridge sitting across the river Skell, close to the site of a lost iron bridge from the 18th century.

The Drifted and Bridged installations will be on display  throughout the summer, while Spiked - an inflatable artwork - will be making occasional appearances.

It bursts through the columns of The Temple of Piety, with a statue of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, looking on from the lake.

The Aislabie family, created many follies to surprise and delight their 18th century guests and Mr Messam hopes his contemporary works will attract similar attention.

He said:

Justin Scully, general manager at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, said:

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