KENDAL.- Can Art Really be Useful?

The current Grizedale Arts retrospective exhibition spread throughout the Lake District says YES

The Nuisance of Landscape at Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal is a dazzling retrospective spanning 15 years and hundreds of projects by the cream of the brat pack British artists and a smattering of international figures including Jonathan Meese, Tania Bruguera and Olaf Breuning.

The exhibition preaches, cajoles, humours and provokes, with film, complex installations and amalgamations of artists and projects – it tells a myriad of stories.

‘Grizedale Arts illuminates the development of this iconoclastic organisation from a landscape sculpture park through the post Young British Artists naughty boy era to a new ethos of use and value.’ Adam Sutherland, Director, Grizedale Arts

‘It sends shivers down my spine every time I come into the space’. Abbot Hall Art Gallery volunteer invigilator

Many of Britain’s most prominent artists can be tracked through the 15 years represented in the show - for example Marcus Coates is seen in 1999 making his immersion into nature works and reappears in 2006 in Japan as part of the ‘Seven Samurai ‘ alongside other stalwarts like Juneau/projects and Pope and Guthrie. The exhibition doesn’t shy from the embarrassing array of glittering prize winners spotted earlier in their careers by Grizedale Arts: Ryan Gander, Jeremy Deller, Mark Wallinger, Emily Wardill, Matt Stokes, Pope & Guthrie, Fernando García-Dory and Laure Prouvost to name but a few.

Whilst achieving a comprehensive survey of British artists and their development over the last 15 years, the show also includes a cornucopia of found objects, community projects and ‘outsider art’ from the locale, reminding us that Grizedale Arts is as inclusive and educational as it is punk.

‘Prophetic and on the money in a way that it normally seems almost impossible for a museum exhibition to be’ Gallery visitor in gallery comments book

The retrospective spreads it wings wide, offering a geographical and cultural tour of the Lake District by placing the works in diverse alternative venues.Laure Prouvost’s Wantee show is reworked in the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry, smearing itself over a traditional farmhouse kitchen – old crisps, Ferrero Rocher and all.

In Blackwell’s pristine Arts and Crafts setting there is an installation drawn from the domestic and design contents of Grizedale Arts’ HQ, Lawson Park farm,which presents a survey of the lost causes of craft - an alternative to the current William Morris show at the National Portrait Gallery, and surely the only craft exhibition ever to references TV’s Garth Marenghi’s dystopia as a key source.

The exhibition is a true collaboration, with artists, writers, communities, curators, administrators amalgamated, working as a collective.

Open until 20 December 2015, with free entry at Abbot Hall Art Gallery and Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry on Monday 15 and Wednesday 17 December.