Grizedale got asked to do an oyster card wallet (some sort of travel pass thing) - a part of celebrating 60 years of the Arts Council. Not quite sure if I get the connection but I guess they wanted something from the ol’ countryside, nice to asked though. Kinda hard thing to do, so little space, we would have liked to do something a bit promotional but it didn’t really seem possible within the constraints. The other idea was to crusade a new set of morals, a code for social living. The Arts Council ambition is to promote the idea of a ‘right to art’ . I like the idea of what you might have a right to but didn’t know or care, or that was not of any relevance, i.e. a right to luxury goods ‘err like thanks yeah’. So anyway we did a code for the country which referenced many other codes of behaviour all of which have been horribly abused, misused and re interpreted. The text is accompanied by an elysian fields like image of Langdale valley in the Lake District sourced from the internet. Langdale was the site where the London bombers allegedly trained for their attacks, allegedly running up and down this idealized UK landscape wearing heavy rucksacks.

I think the message of the code and image we finally produced was fairly clear, hinting at various interpretations but fairly clearly saying something about the degeneration of social living, the over emphasis of individual rights over the common good, our twisted and overblown concept of freedom and the kinds of reaction this position is likely to generate.
Anyway after everyone (commissioners, designers, Arts Council) had had thier say, it was maybe slightly more ambiguous (or less) so here for anyone interested is a version I thought worked - (on advice I was happy to take out a rather pompous quote about freedom being a licence).

A Code for the Country
Rights of Persons
To say anything in private and nothing in public
To feel superior in a variety of ways
To inflict themselves and or any parts of themselves at any time upon another or others
To be right unequivocally
To shrug off the burden of others
To ‘whatever’ by any means necessary
To wander

With sincere thanks and regrets to:
Privacy laws, The Declaration of Independence, Legal Rights, Paris Hilton, Malcolm X, 10 Commandments, Islamic principles, Green Cross Code, Rights of Man, Burgess Meredith/Mickey Goldmill, William Wordsworth, The Country Code, Lager ads of the 1970’s, various Christian doctrines, the Highway Code, Tony Blair, Milton, Raymond Babbitt

Twisted pulled and hurt …..

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 17/02/07 at 10:43 : 1 Comment

Trailer Trash

Finally Summerhill is sold and today we cleared all the ghastly B&B style crap into a skip. I've waited 5 years to do this. The sale now releases money to start on the building of Lawson Park.
Anyone with fond memories and in need of a momento can pick up a souvenir on ebay - floral everything.
The house has been bought in association with the Baptist church down the road, they will be using it as a religous study centre.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 21:27 : 0 Comments

Car Crash

This is Olaf Breuning, Marcus Coates and the Juneau projects

The gallery seem to be having great success in selling chairs from the show, which is nice. Grizedale has been under some pressure to develop income streams. Selling art seems like the second least likely way to do this (selling farm produce being the even less likely), still who knows, chairs at £1,000 each, starts to add up - and the beauty is its all for charity (Grizedale arts being the charity).

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 21:24 : 0 Comments

Clean white slum

The idea was to make a kind of shanty town down one side of the gallery, did'nt want to mess up that perfect white space.

Robert Eikmeyer a German curator came over to help with the show, he is developing some projects with us and is currently working with Jonathan Meese, who I think has had a big impact on Robert, it’s all gone a bit rock and roll – he’s talking revolution! I talked to Jonathan Meese on the phone, who sounded really funny, I look forward to his visit to Grizedale in June.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 21:19 : 0 Comments

Park A More world

Spent the last week in Lausanne, somewhat nose to grindstone trying to turn a somewhat random pile of Grizedale material into an exhibition. It's always a tad tricky to get all the disparate things to hang together and in this case to stay hung. The Gallery was designed by Jean Giles Decousterd – an incredibly 70’s guy with his Mini and Michael Caine trench coat, the Italian Job theme tune kept playing in my head – ‘this is the self preservation society’ (well it was Switzerland). Jean Giles is more importantly also an incredibly interesting man, he made a fantastic proposal for Lawson Park, (see attachment).
Of course everyone was very nice and chic, Switzerland is always a nice place to visit. I think they were all a bit unsure of the exhibition, bemused, it is always hard to explain the whys and so on. It all seems so obvious to me but I have forgotten what the audience expectation of exhibitions and art is. So our, 'art ideas that are useful' mantra which underlies and really explains most things takes a bit of getting used to.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 20:55 : 0 Comments

Nina Pope - one of the 7 Samurai artists has just come back from Toge (Japan) - she took a group from the Royal College - interactive design department. Of course they had a great if rather cold time. Check out the snow!

more pictures on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nina_pope/sets

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 20:32 : 0 Comments

Cold tangle

Sharp and beautiful frosty days arrive at last to break up the leaden top soil we had delivered recently. All the signs of spring take a bit of a knock back and not before time, it was all getting out of hand. We have planted seeds in the poly tunnel in preparation for the return visit from the Japanese village of Toge. We are planning to make a restaurant with them in Coniston village to demonstrate locally all the wild spring shoots that are edible, actually not just edible but really good, one of the most memorable meals I had in Japan was at a soba restaurant, cold buckwheat noodles served with tempura of spring shoots. Not so sure how the our village will take to this but we are also asking all the best chefs of the area. It really is a pretty unique thing, the expertise of the village is rare in itself and very much part of a passing way of life.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 08/02/07 at 20:15 : 0 Comments

The wind, will it never stop, it is becoming rather disturbing and a little bit scary, the trees sway around crazily like some sort of ‘It's a Knockout’ prop.

Someone profits from it! Those cats (the cornerstone of the proposed ginger petting zoo) all over this fallen tree like a dreadful hairy rash, they are always straight in there to explore any changes to their environment - as are the visitors, as soon as we clear a bit of land people are in there straight away exploring - people and animals we cant help ourselves.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 15/01/07 at 15:28 : 0 Comments

Proto moss garden

A few weekends ago we had a group of volunteers helping with clearing the forest and re-building walls. It was hard work but we got through a mass of work over the four days. The idea was to clear all the fallen, cut timber and brash from the plantation. We hope to encourage a moss garden to establish, and actually the cleared wood looks not so bad, the immediate result was that the walkers immediately started wandering around it and the schools groups took instantly to scattering the piles of wood chippings (bad). Much like the cats as soon as you open something up they are right in there.
The other rather animal thing that happens a lot now is mountain bikers after miles of cycling though empty forest stop and urinate in the garden. It’s an odd one and I have challenged them on several occasions. I am informed variously that ‘it’s what blokes do’, ‘It’s a right’, and that if I don’t like it I should put up a sign. Where might it end, bearing in mind what a disgruntled old man I am becoming I foresee a site festooned with signs, everything from no whistling (a special hatred) to no blasphemy, actually the ten commandments might just about cover it (apart from whistling which is obviously a sloppy omission from the tablets).
There is something rather strange about working amongst the pleasure seekers, weaving the laden barrows between the cyclists and walkers, usually ignored as if invisible, this correlation of labor and leisure has a particular nuance, both activities generators of sweat. During heavy rain mountain bikers often shout humorously at us ‘you must be mad’ as they wiz by.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 09/01/07 at 16:08 : 0 Comments

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=5492007
Here’s an interesting piece on power generation, we have long been trying to track this local hero down, the yoghurt pot turbine has become a bit of a mythical idea for us having heard of it through anecdote only, here is more concrete evidence, even figures. I am sure we’ ve got 18 inches in one of the many streams that cut through the site.
Interestingly if this can happen t wont be the first water power on the site, the ubiquitous Ruskin initiated a number of water management and power generating schemes on the estate. Also interesting to note that over in Coniston there is a major water turbine being installed, I think on the site of another Victorian system, maybe it’s heritage lottery funded!
Audrey Steeley who used to work at Grizedale and is now director of Beatham Mill recently got funding to install a water turbine that will not only cover the power needs of the organization but also generate 30k a year in income, now that's what I call a ‘nice grant’.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 09/01/07 at 15:35 : 0 Comments