Four art exhibitions opened simultaneously on Friday night before the official start of Corsham Festival. Three were in The Pound, where most of the Festival events take place.

The fourth was the first exhibition of Mish Mash, a new Wiltshire artists’ collective, whose membership embraces painters, writers, poets, jewellery makers, photographers, stained glass artists, collage artists, ceramicists, installation artists, illustrators and more.

The common theme running through the work of 18 members, who took over the former News Shop in the Martingate shopping centre for the weekend, was Wiltshire’s landscape, history and mythology.

In The Pound, where the exhibitions remain until July, the stunning piece which greets visitors in the entrance hall is String Works by Peter Hiett, a 27 year old sculptor from Cheshire.

The work, which is hundreds if not thousands of miles in strands of cotton twine, looks like rays of coloured light and appears to shimmer as you move around it. It took the artist, assisted by his parents, David and Joan nearly two days to install. Peter Hiett has several smaller string works on the walls of exhibition space.

The main work had many fascinated viewers of all ages on opening night.

Julia Leyden was inspired by a composition commissioned for the festival from George Crumb in 1966. It was called Eleven Echoes of Autumn and refers to the current challenges to our civilisation. Ms Leyden has also reworded well known poems to sit alongside the striking paintings.

Claire Baker, who has taken up residence in The Pound’s first artist’s studio in one of its outbuildings, also had open house and as well as being fascinated by her use of ceramic ephemera in her eclectic collection, the visitors were entranced by her cakes – one part of the exhibition and the other plateful to be eaten.