Saturday 13 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Heliopolis FM

Big shout out to Jezzer and Big Al in Londin

Strictly zoo format

Next stop to the fevella's own community radio station, run by volunteers and broadcasting 6.00 am to midnight every day. The station is run on a shoestring budget, often earning an income through advertising or exchange. They recently aquired a sofa for the studio in exchange for 3 months of free advertising for the sofa shop.

The most popular music is of course a hybrid of tradtional and R&B and everything else. Sao Paulo is basically a city created by immigration, feeding its voracious growth. Music, along with football, is their greatest mode of expression.

Jeremy and I are interviewed on air and we are inreasingly feeling like Prince Charles on tour.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 13/03/10 at 13:20 0 Comments

Friday 12 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

UNAS Library

Jeremy and Carlos in the library

Have you got any Dick Francis in large print?

First stop in Heliopolis is to vist the UNAS library, this was the beginning of the project. The library is run for the community with all the books donated by the public. The books are lent on a trust basis, with no membership scheme. The library also hosts book clubs, poetry and rap nights.

The most popular books are from the philosophy section.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 12/03/10 at 22:34 0 Comments

Thursday 11 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Heliopolis

A sneaked photo of the street from my phone

Tuesday, day two, and in at the deep end. Jeremy and I are taken to Heliopolis, Sao Paulo's largest and poorest favella; a jerry built shanty town of 125,000 people with a badass reputation to match. We are warned not to take photographs in the street as the whole district is run by the drug barons who might object to any pictures that might reveal the mechanics of their trade. And we don't want to look like stupid tourists.

We are here to meet the people who run UNAS a social project to educate and improve the outlook of the citizens of Heliopolis.

Interestingly the favella is doesn't come across as the murderous midden heap one is lead to believe but an amazing example of a self organising society. Throughout it's rambling, crumbling streets are all the shops, restaurants and services you would hope to have in a town, albeit self governed by the druglords.

UNAS is exactly what we needed to see, a contemporary version of a Victorian Mechanics Institute, spread throughout a number of ramshackle buildings across the town - library, sports hall, radio station, schoolhouse and so on. UNAS emerged from the vision of one man and has spread to become the ethical backbone of the community.

In what is perhaps the equivalent of the poorhouse the children work on projects (with Lego Technical) to provide electronic/robotic solutions to communal problems, like litter collection or hygiene. John Ruskin would be most enthused.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 11/03/10 at 18:35 1 Comment

Wednesday 10 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

An Education

Carlos the educator gives Jeremy a lesson in numbers

Niemeyer art hangout

Monday afternoon after a good lunch in the park we meet the education team. Carlo shows us a map of the city and explains that education is the make or break of the 2010 Bienal. In 2008 it got a bad name for being closed off and disconnected from the city folk. Not helped by the fact that as a concept a whole floor of the Bienal was left empty, which was subsequently raided by graffiti aritsts.

To answer this they have set a target for 2010 to have 400,000 to take part in the education programme (the overall headcount for each Bienal is 1 million. For this they are recruiting somewhere in the region of 300 education staff.

School children from across the ciy will be bussed in and out, class rooms built and the army of art teachers put to work to shape the Paulinos of the future.

In the evening we go for a quick drink in a residency programme set up by Helmut from Rio in another Niemeyer apartment block, meeting other artists and checking out the cool blue bathroom.

Then onto a Japanese restaurant to do some top drawer sushi. Sao Paulo has the oldest and largest Japanese community (ever) with over 2 million resident.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 10/03/10 at 21:57 0 Comments

Wednesday 10 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Waving a straw in the Albert Hall

Welcome to the pleasure box

Going for a tiring expedition around the Bienal with the curatorial team and architect

Check the ramps on that

The task of making a meaningful statement in a city you don't know is bad enough. Making a meaningful statement in a city you don't know and has a population of around 16 million is a bit worse. And seeing as it has an exhibition venue to match adds a little icing on the top of that problem too.

We are shown around the empty Bienal exhibition building which is like three Turbine Halls together. And that's just one floor of three. All beautifully done by Mr Niemeyer of course.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 10/03/10 at 21:47 0 Comments

Wednesday 10 March '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Ruskin goes to Sao Paulo

One of Oscar Niemeyer's Bienal Park Fruit Fancies

Sao Paulo at night through a Niemeyer brise soleil

This is the first of a number of dispatches from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
I'm here with Jeremy Deller to develop a project with him for the Sao Paulo Bienal this coming September. It came out the project we were working on for the Whitworth Ruskin show, a film by Jeremy on the wrestler Adrian Street, which has a lot to say on the Ruskinian themes of education, social development, craft, labour, industry, ethics, aesthetics and self improvement.

Adrian was born into a coal mining family in south wales, but escaped this life through bodybuilding, costume making and wrestling, transforming himself in to The Queen Bitch of Pro Wrestling. He now lives (aged 68 and still wrestlng) in LA, running a cottage industry in wrestling costume production.

The plan is to combine this with a rethinking and reworking of the victorian Mechanics Institute and make it work in the context of the Bienal and Sao Paulo.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 10/03/10 at 13:11 0 Comments

Tuesday 2 March '10
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Chips, but not your favourite kind

Last weekend saw us turn some long-standing piles of brash and rotting timber into useful bark chips for informal paths in various spots around the land, at last opening up George's Dell properly - this is an atmospheric woodland space around a natural stream, initially created by former gardener George Watson and home last year to an amazing show of Himalayan blue poppies.

And Adam got to use a big orange machine all weekend, which he secretly enjoyed.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/3565/chipsbut.not.your.favourite.kind on 02/03/10 at 10:03 0 Comments

Tuesday 16 February '10
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

A Perfect Excuse

Yeah, well it was less stylish than this

At the weekend I admonished a mountain biker who was urinating onto the wood stack I was in the process of moving, he explained that he thought it belonged to the National Trust.

He finally apologised and considered that that ended the matter, that no further discussion could be enterd into, (apology accepted or not). It seems to be a new fad to apologise quickly and then with the magic word 'the wrong is gone'. Politicians and public servants seem keen on the approach. So I would like to apologise in advance, I'm sorry', and that's an end of it.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 16/02/10 at 07:44 7 Comments

Friday 12 February '10
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Wake Up

Feb. 2010 in the Kitchen Garden

The last few days up here have been nice enough to get out into the garden for a few hours each day, almost the first time since the end of November, which if you remember was the monsoon-like predeccessor to the Siberian winter that followed. Our Kitchen Garden here is undergoing a few changes as we grow more and more vegetables in quantity in the Paddies down the track, and as we (veryreluctantly) give up on the asparagus that we planted in 2006, the first thing in the Kitchen Garden to go in. It's never thrived and - as a coastal plant - you can guess why up here in the wilds. So that bed will end up as Asian vegetables this year. Some ongoing drainage issues in the fruit bed have caused us to discard our summer raspberries in favour of just keeping the autumn ones, and the eBay chicken wire we used on the fruit cage has to be replaced asap before the birds get in there and eat the fruit buds.....

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/3495/wake.up on 12/02/10 at 16:48 0 Comments

Tuesday 2 February '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Ruskin's Relational Aesthetics

Turn your screen to view in its original orientation

I gave a lecture recently to some of the sudents at Chelsea School of Art. One of their number, the young master Robert Mead, was most enthused therein by such talk of Mr Ruskin's forebearance of all things discursive, relational and altermodern. He has since written in haste to share his essay Ruskin's Idea of Relation and it's Connection to Post Modern Painting, which I attach for any reader wishing to pursue this line of enquiry.

I would be tempted to say one might take his arguments as applicable to Tintorett as to Salle, but this is for another occasion and we must, in the first instance, take delight in this exhumation by youth so that that these thoughts may be possessed of the minds of the masses.

Posted by Alistair Hudson on 02/02/10 at 16:27 0 Comments

Tuesday 19 January '10
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

A visitor cometh

Not Diggers but Adamites,

Just organizing for a visit from Californian academic Avery Gordon and found this interesting interview touching on the hypocrisies of the environmental movement as well as some of the high minded and historical precedents and ideals. Avery Gordon interview

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 19/01/10 at 16:32 1 Comment

Sunday 17 January '10
(from The John Ruskin Memorial Blog)

Ruskin Soup

Ruskin Soup

Now we've established that big John Ruskin is worth saving from the dreaded Heritage Vampires, how do we sustain and nourish ourselves on his memory? Ruskin Soup of course!

According to Adam Sutherland, Ruskin was always a man with a plan - and this went as far as having an idea that the working man should always have the recipe for a perfect soup on hand. Cue the ruthless pursuit of a food metaphor by yours truly while Adam cooks. What was Ruskin Soup? Did Ruskin have the ingredients? Could soup - or art for that matter - really sustain and nourish the Ruskinian working woman or man? And how about their fractured and fissured twenty first century counterparts? Can Ruskin's recipes really help us find the way out of the post-postmordern stew were slowly simmering in? All - or more likely none - of these questions will be answered in our culinary homage to the late, great Big John Ruskin (and Keith Floyd).

Posted by John Byrne on 17/01/10 at 16:52 0 Comments

Wednesday 13 January '10
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

Happy Christmas

Thanks to Mat for reminding us of Oscar Wilde's words, 'Its easy to be good in the country'. Although I think Oscar meant good as in not be naughty because there is nothing naughty to do, and I think Mat meant because there is no-one to get naughty with, but what it really means is there is no competition and whatever you do looks good.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 13/01/10 at 19:28 1 Comment

Wednesday 6 January '10
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

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

Tuesday 22 December '09
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

Li Yuan Chia in Cumbria - BBC radio doc

Just in from David Gaffney:

Dear all,

You might like to listen to this programme about Chinese artist Li Yuan-Chia who lived in Cumbria for a time and set up a gallery.

When Taiwan's first abstract artist settled in a Cumbrian farmhouse, his life changed. Deriving inspiration from landscape and local people, he encouraged new British artists and anticipated the success of contemporary Chinese visual art.

Li Yuan Chia was one of the first significant Chinese abstract artists of the 20th century. This programme, presented by Sally Lai, the director of Manchester's Chinese Arts Centre, examines his career from the place he spent the last 28 years of his life: a stone farmhouse, built next to Hadrian's Wall in Cumbria.

Listen to the programme here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pcf5j

Li Yuan-Chia

Born in China in 1929, Li was educated in Taiwan. He worked and exhibited in Italy before moving toLondon in 1963. Here, Li's reputation was established with monochrome paintings and scrolls marked with a tiny, isolated dot.

But Li came to dislike the fashionable metropolitan art world of the mid-1960s. In 1968 he met Cumbrian painter Winifred Nicholson, who pursuaded Li to move away from the busy capital to a far more remote location, near her own home. With his own hands Li then set about converting a farm building, the Banks, at Brampton, where he built a gallery, library, theatre, printing press, children's art room and photographic darkroom, and opened it to the public. It became a popular attraction for local people, art afficianados and tourists walking Hadrian's Wall.

Over the next ten years over 300 artists exhibited at the Banks, which was also the base from which Li's organisation, the LYC Foundation, was able to commission work by young British artists, some of whom became very successful later, including sculptors and land artists Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and Bill Woodrow.

Li's own work moved into abstract sculpture, using magnets, gold leaf, plastic discs suspended on plastic thread and additional text. The landscape also affected him, and he began to explore photography and environmental art. Always, he wrote poetry.

But after Arts Council funding became increasingly limited, (Is this right? That can't be right, DG) the LYC Foundation had to struggle to survive. Li continued to produce art, which became increasingly contemplative. He fell ill with cancer and died in 1994. Art historians now acknowledge Li Yuan Chia as having paved the way for the current expansion of Chinese contemporary art. But his former home in Cumbria is derelict.

http://www.lycfoundation.org/poems/

Posted by Karen Guthrie on 22/12/09 at 20:39 1 Comment

Tuesday 22 December '09
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Let them eat brussel sprouts

Worried about whether the 2 borrowed ponies were going hungry under the 18" of snow, here's Adam throwing them the tops of the Christmas brussel sprouts.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/let.them.eat.brussel.sprouts on 22/12/09 at 14:36 0 Comments

Tuesday 22 December '09
(from Lawson Park Blog)

Let them eat brussel sprouts

Worried about whether the 2 borrowed ponies were going hungry under the 18" of snow, here's Adam throwing them the tops of the Christmas brussel sprouts.

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/3491/let.them.eat.brussel.sprouts on 22/12/09 at 14:36 0 Comments

Monday 21 December '09
(from Lawson Park Blog)

It may be winter outside....

.....but inside Lawson Park it's spring, thanks to that new-fangled underfloor heating.

The GA Xmas Party on Friday went with a swing, we welcomed interns Ellie, Matt and Sophie back and combined the celebrations with Adam Sutherland's 51st birthday!

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/it.may.be.winter.outside. on 21/12/09 at 15:58 0 Comments

Monday 21 December '09
(from Lawson Park Blog)

It may be winter outside....

.....but inside Lawson Park it's spring, thanks to that new-fangled underfloor heating.

The GA Xmas Party on Friday went with a swing, we welcomed interns Ellie, Matt and Sophie back and combined the celebrations with Adam Sutherland's 51st birthday!

Originally posted at www.lawsonpark.org/blog/3490/it.may.be.winter.outside. on 21/12/09 at 15:58 0 Comments

Friday 18 December '09
(from Grizedale Arts Blog)

Seriously Compromised

Lawson park tree

architecturally and politically - Happy Christmas y'all

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 18/12/09 at 12:24 2 Comments