'Mug (Roadshow)'
Grizedale Arts (Adam Sutherland/Mark Titchner)
Glazed Stoneware
80 x 130
2003
Purchased for a few quid, possibly a fiver.
2013.003
Until I read Paul Scott's comments on my last I was going to list something else but now I feel (forgive the pun) that its time to mug up on craft!
Around the turn of the millennium I was a trustee of the Grizedale Society, which during this time became Grizedale Arts. It had a simple problem its founder, Chief Forester, Chief Executive and Chairman Bill Grant OBE (pause for breath and to stifle any thoughts regarding the conflicts of interest that this list evokes) was finding it 'difficult' to allow a successor to succeed him owing to a case of undiagnosed 'possessive megalomania'. Two lesser souls had tried and failed and the Arts Council who worked at arms length (from which distance they doled out the cash that kept us afloat) were not happy. They had said that if this one didn't stick we'd be looking for bucks elsewhere.*
It was explained to me on appointment that my job therefore was to be 'of the visual arts' and to support the appointment of a third director specifically in one meeting so conflict ridden and ghastly that I won't forget it in a hurry. As it turned out the third appointment was belligerent enough to see the old bugger off.
Step forward Adam Sutherland!
For me it was a dismal tour of duty mainly involving long, very long, drives to the middle of nowhere, cutting short a days paid work for a nights unpaid work, haggling over childcare with Lynn and meeting in an unheated visitor centre/theatre which would end just as the pub was shutting and with it any prospect of nourishment before midnight. I observe without comment that the standard of hospitality has significantly improved now that I have left.
Adam met Grizedale's challenges head on and with brilliance. He wasn't then supported by the staff and fellow travellers he works with now. He sought out opportunities for conflict and confrontation believing that antagonism and antipathy were the best basis for a communicative and curatorial strategy focussed on change and relevance.
Gone were the insipid and inclusive call outs in Artists Newsletter 'to do something in the forest' (not too far from the path) and in were the 'apply if you dare' adverts in Art Monthly. Not to worry walkers though if you miss your 'art' because the forestry commission now have their own separate Arts Council funded Grizedale sculpture programme (which doesn't in any way step on Grizedale Arts toes) so 'nice stuff not too far from the path' still does happen.
Every year there was an event around which artists were commissioned having been groomed (I think I mean curated) beforehand by a drunken viewing of the 'Filth and the Fury' or some similar. From these evenings came a country show with the pathetically sad 'Lofty' (Don Estelle) from 'It ain't half hot mum', a wedding for two couples (one middle class and one working class) and 'Roadshow' which was 2003's effort. Adam usually reported on the build up to and commission of these events to the board at sufficient length to ensure that no restaurant within twenty miles would still be open.
Roadshow toured to a selection of nowheres, coming to a bloody conclusion in the form of a pitched battle in which the youth of Blaenau Ffestiniogg burned its tent to the ground. The community were thus said to be 'engaged'.
This mug was offered as a souvenir of this event and in that spirit was bought by myself from a stall on the occasion of Grizedale's hosting of the 'Roadshow'.
It is deliberately ugly and very uncomfortable to hold. A mockery of the kind of crass 'handmade' souvenir sold in Lake District craft shops complete with Titchner's 'Roadshow Graphic' crudely stamped on a cartouche. The clay is even 'too groggy' in an ugly way and the glaze has all the appeal of Hammerite on the lips. Which is why it currently contains a purple felt tip, a posidrive bit, two paper clips and a rubber and not coffee, which can be found in the altogether nicer 'Majolica Works' mug behind it in the picture above. If it is 'useful' at all - its clearly not for drinking.
It is of course all about craft, indeed one might almost say a critique of craft and what what has become of it as Adam revives a 'forgotten' skill from a former life as a sloppy potter suborning Titchner to collaborate no doubt.
Grizedale's new HQ now rejoices in a formal collection including one of mugs 'A mug's history of design'. The collections policy is most illuminating just in case you thought I was reading too much into it.
Links:
* I'm assuming that the minutes of any such conversation were 'redacted' long ago
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