Audio > FRED An Art Invasion Across
Cumbria
Listen to the Cumbria show below, or download
to your computer (right-click / option click, 28MB, 1hr 1min)
 |
| Ullswater Steamers dock, Windermere, Cumbria |
View the Cumbria visual arts map (808k,
JPG)
FRED - the annual art invasion of Cumbria - works with artists from around the globe to create new work in some of England's most spectacular landscapes in what has become Europe's largest annual festival of site-specific art. After running for 5 years, 2008 sees the final FRED invasion. Previous FRED events have seen work on buses, up the fells, under the lakes, in the woods, at the service station, down the pub and around a mountain. Over 350 artists have created 164 projects in over 250 locations in 4 years.
On Monday 29 September 2008 , Portable Radio visited Windermere and spoke with Steve Messum, artist and director of FRED and Fold Gallery in Kirkby Stephen, artist Paul Scott, Dee Hibbert-Jones, commissioned artist in FRED and Assistant Professor of Arts at the University of California Santa Cruz and Dee's mother Barbara Hibbert-Jones who was born and brought up in Cumbria.
Portable
Radio would like to thank Ullswater
Steamers for their generous loan of one of their craft, on which this Portable
Radio session took place.
More images of the session in Windermere are here - use the Next and Previous control to browse the images.
During each Portable Radio session we make a careful note of all of the organisations people refer to. Below are a list of links to the projects, organisations and information people mention in this dialogue.
A number of artists and writers traditionally associated with the Lake District were mentioned, including William Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, John Ruskin, Sheila Fell and L.S. Lowry.
Contemporary art practitioners, gallerists, writers and curators such as Percy Kelly, Conrad Atkinson, Alan Dawson and Chris Wadsworth as well as festivals such as Geoff Cox's Potfest were mentioned as well.
Cumbrian towns Maryport, Workington, Whitehaven and Barrow were also mentioned frequently.
FRED
Annual contemporary art festival across Cumbria from 2004-2008.
University of Cumbria
Incorporating
the former Cumbria College of Art and Design in Carlisle, the main art school
in the region.
Fold Gallery
Contemporary art gallery in Kirkby Stephen, run by Steve Messum.
Grizedale Arts
International contemporary arts events, residencies and other projects in Lawson
Park Farm, Lake District National Park, Cumbria.
Abbot Hall Art Gallery
Art gallery in a Georgian villa in Kendal, Cumbria.
Lakeland Arts Trust
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Blackwell, the Arts & Crafts House and the Museum
of Lakeland Life in the English Lake District are all run by the Lakeland Arts
Trust.
Art Gene
Creates residencies, exhibitions, symposiums and projects focusing on the role
and engagement of the regeneration of the social, natural
and built environment, in Barrow, Cumbria.
Cumbria Network
Online network of visual artists in Cumbria.
Forestry Commission
Government department responsible for the protection and expansion of Britain's
forests and woodlands.
Jan
Hicks
Contemporary crafts maker and previous commissioned artist for FRED who
knitted socks for sheep and created a felted
drawing on Wild Boar Fell.
Cumbria Arts in Education
Increases opportunities for young people and the wider community in Cumbria to
work with and benefit from the skills and expertise of professional artists.
Creative Partnerships
Arts Council England supported national creativity project for schools.
Castlegate House Gallery
Gallery exhibiting contemporary paintings, sculpture, ceramics, from English,
Scottish and international artists.
Grayson Perry
Turner Prize winning transvestite potter.
Ivo
Watts-Russell
Founder and president of 4AD record label.