Exhibition preview: Jon Edgar: Sculpture Series, The Lightbox, Woking, until August 18 2013

Sir Roy Strong, the former Director of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, was unimpressed with the last bust of him created by an artist.

Under the gaze of Jon Edgar, a sculptor who has studied 12 significant figures for this exhibition of terracotta heads, his faith has finally been restored decades on.

“I’ve only sat for one sculptor before, 40 years ago,” he recalls.

“That was a lengthy process involving multiple sittings. The result, cast in bronze, lacks certain immediacy, the consequence of prolonged tinkering.

“But that quality of immediacy is certainly not lacking in the head Jon modelled of me in a single day.”

Edgar rejects the title of portrait sculptor, opining only an interest in people.

One of his fellow moulders, Peter Randall-Page, is one of the faces, as is Chris Ingram, the entrepreneur and art magpie whose collection provides a significant section of The Lightbox’s displays.

• Open 10.30am-5pm (11am-5pm Sunday, closed Monday). Admission free. Follow the gallery on Twitter @TheLightbox.