Thursday 24 June '10

Late at Tate - You Tube can Double Dip

Yes for you folks who missed our spectacular at Tate Britain on June 4th, Jesse Rae has kindly youtubed his whole set with the Thistles and Skip Macdonald. Watch out for the Double Dip now.....

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 24/06/10 at 10:38 0 Comments

Topics: 'funk' 'Jesse Rae' 'Tate'

Thursday 24 June '10

Hide and Horn Online

Long time Grizedale collaborator Peter Hodgson now has his own online shop. Do pay it a visit for finely crafted luxury goods in leather, horn, wood, ceramic and a variety of pet food supplies.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 24/06/10 at 10:31

Friday 9 April '10

Fairweather Gardener

Michael Bentines Potting Time.

As I seem to have spent most of 2010 buried in a laptop writing funding applications, proposals, pontificating and prose (oh and galavanting off to summery Brazil), all that Ruskin talk made me make some time for garden time today. Not quite green gym, but at least sewn three trays of Pak Choi, Guy Lan and Choi Sum, all courtesy of the Manchester Chinese Allotment Ladies via the Mother in Law. If those babies take we're in for some sweet mother veg this year. Oh Christ, look I'm at the laptop again.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 09/04/10 at 15:45 0 Comments

Saturday 13 March '10

MacFavela

I'm lovin' it

We have lunch at the Heliopolis branch of MacDonalds. A scratch built version of the burger chain that was recently threatened with legal action by McD's - obviously a serious threat to the food giant.

But I can see why, as it's actually really good. I have a prime steak sandwhich with salad and a freshly pressed tropical fruit drink, more than my five a day.

NB there are no fat people in Sao Paulo.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 13/03/10 at 13:49 0 Comments

Wednesday 6 January '10

Snow start to the New Year

Lawson Park is in there somewhere

Despite going back to work on Monday, I haven't made it in to the office yet. Someone dumped a load of snow on the Lake District and it's stopped working. If you are trying to phone us, try an email instead, looks like homeworking for a few more days yet...

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 06/01/10 at 11:39 0 Comments

Thursday 12 November '09

Honesty is the best policy

Thanks for the money motherfuckers

Wapke Feenstra was always a little critical of our honesty policy for the honest stall. She would I think prefer that we gave fixed prices for the goods, rather than a pay what you think its worth system, which I understand, given the effort in producing most of the goods, including or especially vegetables. None the less true honesty always wins through even when someone steals all the money from the jar as this picture shows. They have kindly drawn on the jar with the 'comments pen'.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 12/11/09 at 14:45 1 Comment

Thursday 12 November '09

A Lamb Baste 13th November 200 7.30pm

A Radio Animal event by Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson

Supported by the Storey Institute, Lancaster, The Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council England and University of Cumbria:

Snaebjornsdottirwilsondesribetheprojectasthus:

Grizedale Arts is hosting a Radio Animal event - a meal at which a number of invited people, including artists, curators and arts facilitators, animal studies scholars, and local interested parties will discuss the issue of 'animal'.

We want to approach issues of identity in relation to animals. Why are we culturally so ambivalent in respect of who we are and how we should behave in the presence of either the term 'animal' or indeed animals themselves. As human animals, culturally we tend to value those animals that are not ourselves or very, very like us, chiefly in relation to their effectiveness in fulfilling some human function or need, or conversely the threat we believe they might hold to challenge our will or comfort.

Awareness of self, a faculty we (human-animals) believe separates us from other species, has unexpectedly brought us a troubled relationship with non-human animals. Because of this it could be argued, that a necessary psychological distance has been established between us and those species over which we exercise the most control.

Because so much of what we are in adulthood is inherited, our subscription to this legacy, leads us to believe without question in the apparent cultural order of things. Such belief generally, is accepting of our dominion over others and an elevated evolutionary position in relation to other species and thus fails in turn to recognize an intrinsic interdependence between species. An acknowledgement of this, might well have helped us avoid many of the more difficult consequences we face today in respect of the environment and therefore paradoxically our own as well as everyone else's survival.

The bottom line for such considerations is one concerning habitat - all species adapt well or less well, for better or for worse to different habitats and when those specialist habitats fail, an ability to move or to adapt quickly enough to survive, is tested. Uncertainty In The City (Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, commissioned by Storey Gallery, Lancaster) is a speculative, artists' exploration into the relationship between humans and the animals that nudge at and breach the borders of our homes. At the heart of this enquiry is the membrane that is breached, whether this is a material 'skin' of bricks and mortar, fences and land, or a linguistic contrivance.

Radio Animal has been on the road since early summer this year asking questions of people regarding their proximity with other species, and discussing their experiences with others in the home, hidden in the fabric of their home, in the garden and otherwise as they go about their daily business.

At a time when environmental peril is discussed as a global issue and overheard in some form by us on a daily basis, leaving us often with a sense of impotence in the face of the inevitable, artists Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson are examining what 'environment' might mean in a more intimate and domestic sense - where consideration of this term might trigger a more meaningful and evocative recognition for individuals and where the sharing of space between species and its consequences might resonate more powerfully allowing some chance of new understanding and even new behaviour.

Participants

Illustrator Meg Falconer, farmer John Atkinson, Guest Room artist Maria Benjamin, poet Jack Maynard, writer and critic Rikke Hansen, tech fiend Dorian Moore, Grizedale Arts Director Adam Sutherland, artist Karen Guthrie, Alistair Hudson, (Radio Animal) artists Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 12/11/09 at 13:13

Tuesday 10 November '09

Wapke Feenstra

Wapke at the honesty stall sporting a Mussolini mug, which reads the equivalent of

With many thanks to...

Wapke Feenstra has been undertaking a Grizedale Arts residency funded by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, design and Architecture. Over the three month residency Wapke has been involved in a critical dialogue with both the organisation and its context.

She is herself from a farming background in Friesland and so well suited to be the first artist in residence at the new Lawson Park headquarters and farm project.

Underlying her multi strand approach here has been a slight incredulousness around the British rural culture and also the British rural art scene. That any one bothers to farm this land of the Lake District, with no soil and no market for its product other than tourist entertainment, underlined much of her work here.

Her membership of the myvillages group made a good starting point, in that she was able to address the immediate issue of the Lawson Park honesty stall. This stall, which had originally been designed and built by a group of art students from Oxford, was created as part of a chain of stalls in a network of shops that aim to promote products and ideas from peripheral zones (ie rural backwaters) through the sale of local goods combined with a socio-political message. The ambition being to engage with the tourist/visitor at a deeper level and encourage a truer understanding of the context.

The Lawson Park stall, however, had grown weather weary and tired, so Wapke offered to undertake the redesign and reconstruction of the stall, to make it effective and functional.

Working with intern Sophie Perry, the stall was adapted and extended with shelving systems, boxes, signage, a picnic table for eating and viewing leaden with homespun phraseology to stimulate the user into considering the value of the produce on sale (in this case a pay what you want honesty jar policy) and subsequently the value of rural life in general.

The stall was launched at the opening of Lawson Park and was soon turning over a good few hundred pounds a week, clearly making an impact on its passing punters, including a beaming Nick Serota who cleaned us out of Chantrelles. She also built a market around the stall of local crafts and food for both openings and offered her own imported myvillages delicacies of cheese, brot and and pate.

Wapke contributed in other ways during her stay too, including the commission of the Lawson Park dining room table made by the artist for the main and central (physical, social, theoretical) space in the building. Wapke used her familiar technique of overpainted plywood grain combined with supporting structure produced by Process Pipework Services of Ulverston.

She made research visits to three local farms: Bracelet Hall, Yew Tree and Nibthwaite Grange, the latter being the most successful as farmer John Atkinson was able to dedicate a considerable amount of time to explaining the reality of farming this land and his campaigning as treasurer of the Cumbrian Commoners Association. Wapke took a soil sample from John's best meadow by the river which reinforced Wapke's aforementioned incredulousness as only 15cm of soil was the best she could manage without hitting bare rock.

Wapke also took part in the Rhizome and MyVillages Symposium from October 23 to 29. She is currently developing two projects with us: the International Village Shop with myvillages.org and a European toruing project on primary industries with German curator Robert Eikmeyer.

Links:

www.wapke.nl

www.formerfarmland.org

http://www.fondsbkvb.nl/

www.myvillages.org

http://www.bibliobox.org/

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 10/11/09 at 15:02 0 Comments

Monday 19 October '09

Does Public Art Need Outsiders?

Does Public Art Need to be Outside?

This was the title of a conference held at Lawson Park on October 7 by Situations Bristol and IXIA (a public art think tank mind gym) when we tested the new building to the max, crowbarring 40 guests and speakers into the space with the odd stroll outside to breathe in some air in between the exhalation of much art theory. Speakers included Paul Domela, Jeanne Van Heeswijk, Karlheinz Kopf, Andreas Lang and our good selves, all bundled up a packaged by Paul O'Neill.

Someone even said Lawson Park was 'the best seminar venue I have ever been too'.

If you are interested in the findings of the conference the answer was "sometimes, sometimes not, maybe".

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 19/10/09 at 16:30 0 Comments

Topics: 'lawson park' 'public art strategy'

Monday 12 October '09

Return of The Greasy Pole

Conquering the New Pole

Saturday 19 September 2009 1120hrs: Adam Kane becomes the first winner of The Greasy Pole competition since its re-introduction to Egremont's annual Crab Fair as permanent work of art/heritage artifact/sporting apparatus by artists Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane. Adam actually conquered the Pole twice, being the first up to retrieve one of the six ribbons from 30ft above and then some 10 minutes later to snatch the shortest ribbon to claim the coveted prize of £2 and a leg of lamb from Wilson's butchers. That's Wilson's butchers. The ease at which the young urchinesque Egremonthian shot up the new Carbon Fibre Nike Greasy Pole Pro suggested we should baste more WD40 on next year, although most barely managed to lift their feet from the floor.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 12/10/09 at 10:11

Topics: 'Egremont Jeremy Deller Alan Kane'