- Venue
- Cumbria-wide
- Starts
- Saturday, September 13, 2014
- Ends
- Sunday, September 28, 2014
- Address
- Cumbria
- Location
- North West England
- Organiser
- Eden Arts
The 2014 event features additional strands to the Open Studios including Art in Extraordinary Places, Micro Commissions and an exciting new Young Cumbrian Artist of the Year Award.
C-Art in Extraordinary Places will celebrate artists taking their practice outside of their studios and into unusual and extraordinary locations all over Cumbria. Artists will take upresidence in old barns, cathedrals, stately homes, mines and even on the summit of Scafell Pick – making this particular installation the highest art in England! The National Trust and key cultural destinations will be hosting C-Artists within beautiful heritage settings, with venues including Lowther Castle, Florence Mine, Sprint Mill, Sizergh, The Bowder Stone, Acorn Bank, and Fell Foot Park.
C-Art 2014 launches an exciting and important new award for the creative industries in Cumbria – the Young Cumbrian Artist of the Year. The award is a new scheme for Cumbria to support the professional development of artists’ careers, and will become key milestone on any young aspiring artists CV. Over 85 artists aged 15-24 entered the competition for a chance to win a £500 cash prize and Derwent limited edition pencil box worth £500. The competition follows last year’s successful ‘Young Curator’ scheme, which saw Cumbrian students work with professional curators to select the artwork for the ‘C-Art at Rheged’ exhibition that subsequently had 10,000 visitors. Shortlisted entries are featured on a dedicated online gallery on the 2014 C-Art website – www.c-art.org.uk.
Four micro commissions will see selected artists produce new work in the Cumbrian landscape, making the summer trail for visual arts an adventure beyond gallery walls. The funded awards have been presented to artists Sarah Tew for her ‘Untitled, (Wall)’ standing on the boundary between the Lake District National Park and the Western Lakes, Annabel Lewis for her ‘customised’ animal skull installations, Alice Francis with her ‘Hilltop Rest; Hotel for Birds’ at the summit of Scafell Pike and Richardson Wood for his ‘Drovers Path’, a linear artwork along a former droving path using thumb sticks and crooks with bindings of wool and feathers.
‘C-Art at Rheged 2014’ features a ‘pocket’ exhibition with selected artworks no larger than ‘20x20x20’, emphasizing the myriad differences in style and technique employed by the selected artists. The gem-like pieces are also much more domestic in scale, and affordable, making the exhibition a great chance to add to your own art collection. The C-Art at Rheged Sculpture Trail will transform Rheged into a public art space, with sculpture and installation taking over the halls, cafes and corridors of the centre.
The Open Studios this year offer an even larger trail of artists studios galleries and ‘pop up’ groups. Each studio and gallery space presents the visitor with an insight into their practice with a massively diverse selection to see, from traditional watercolours and photography to contemporary installation and performance.
Alongside the C-Art trail, many artists will run workshops from their studios and there is something for everyone to try. Visitors can find their ‘inner’ expressive artist through drawing with Alex Jakob-Whitworth, make multi-coloured woodcut prints with Debby Akam, see digital print demonstrations with Ray Ogden, take part in still life drawing with Ellie Logan, learn new mixed media techniques at the Howgill Family Centre, experiment with wool, string and found objects with Annabel Lewis and Natalie Williamson, play with vibrant colours on silk with Margaret Wilmot, create a series of mono prints exploring narrative at Impress Studio, sing songs in celebration of the landscape with Lucinda Guiness and create paper mayflies as part of an immense community installation at Rheged with Katrina Prior.
Even more workshops include fused glass jewellery, pot throwing, rug weaving, t-shirt embellishing, collage, beginners felt, nuno-felting, low tech printing, and sessions exploring natural pigments at Florence Mine. The workshops and studios cover the length and breadth of Cumbria and many are family friendly events. All information and opening times can be found in the catalogue and on the C-Art website – www.c-art.org.uk.
C-Art is co-coordinated by Eden Arts and is designed to promote and celebrate Cumbria’s rich creative talent, inviting visitors to step into the gallery and the landscape to buy art, explore the landscape and meet the artists themselves. A perfect time of year to experience Cumbria’s beautiful rural landscape, C-Art is also devised to attract new visitors, with the opportunity to see how work is made, talk to artists, watch demonstrations and visit private studios that are usually closed to the public.
The 2013 event won Cumbria Tourism’s ‘Tourism Event of the Year Award’ – with over 36,000 studio and exhibition visits, and generating around £140,000 in art sales – a substantial increase on previous years.
‘Over the last three years we have been developing C-Art as a brand for the celebration of Cumbria’s artists and we have been delighted with its success.’ Says Adrian Lochhead, director of Eden Arts.
Catalogues will be available from participating galleries, Tourist Information Centres and via the C-Art website throughout September. A full list of participating galleries and artists can be found on the C-Art website www.c-art.org.uk
