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Join us for an artist talk hosted by curator Daniel Sturgis and writer Martin Holman as a part of the group exhibition, On the Thick and Thin of Painting.

Saturday 19 September 2026
2 – 4pm

at Cross Lane Projects, Kendal LA9 5LB

Conceived by British painter Daniel Sturgis, On the Thick and Thin of Painting explores the materiality of the medium, its physical and ethereal boundaries, and the enduring subculture of abstraction.

The exhibition is framed as a visual dialogue between nine artists’ work, where the title refers to how each artist navigates the formal and conceptual densities of paint. Whether applied with full-bodied gusto, delicate slightness, or felt through its absence, the “thick and thin” of the exhibition’s title serves as a metaphor for how each artist uses an idea of paint to position their work against art history, the contemporary moment, and the belief in painting as a critical and durable medium.

A catalogue accompanying the exhibition featuring On pleasure and unpredictability, on acting and waiting, on surprise and the accidental by Martin Holman will be available to purchase at the gallery.

Limited tickets available.

What is a painting? Why does painting continue to obsess us? Conceived by artist and curator Daniel Sturgis, On the Thick and Thin of Painting approaches these questions through twenty-two works by nine artists at Cross Lane Projects. The artworks are presented in dialogue with one another, each challenging the viewer’s assumptions about what a painting is allowed to be. There are canvases here, but also woven cloth, glazed clay, painted marble, aluminium, found clothing, works on paper and gelatin silver prints.

The conversations between works are direct but open to interpretation, and there is something joyful in circulating the gallery and making connections. Tom Benson’s pinned aluminium panels answer Sturgis’s painted grids across the room; the organic coral-like edges of Phillip Allen’s boards rhyme with the buckled planes of Martina Geccelli’s ceramics; Alexis Harding’s wrinkled skins and Cecilia Charlton’s woven fields turn out to be asking the same question about how a surface comes to exist… 

By Andee Collard

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Conceived by British painter Daniel Sturgis, On the Thick and Thin of Painting explores the materiality of the medium, its physical and ethereal boundaries, and the enduring subculture of abstraction.

The exhibition is framed as a visual dialogue between nine artists’ work, where the title refers to how each artist navigates the formal and conceptual densities of paint. Whether applied with full-bodied gusto, delicate slightness, or felt through its absence, the “thick and thin” of the exhibition’s title serves as a metaphor for how each artist uses an idea of paint to position their work against art history, the contemporary moment, and the belief in painting as a critical and durable medium.

This publication features original texts:

• Notes on an Exhibition by Daniel Sturgis
• On pleasure and unpredictability, on acting and waiting, on surprise and the accidental by Martin Holman

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Maybe it’s time we did a little more thinking about how we feel when encountering artworks, exhibitions, and diverse other aspects of the art world. Feelings felt by audiences, as well as those felt by artists, can all be considered relevant during those key times art comes into being and subsequently gets to be perceived as art. Art evolves, in part perhaps, because of this emotion-led element. 

Cross Lane Projects’ former factory space has allowed room for this exhibition to adopt a layout using a series of temporary walls, turning inwards to the left and then to the right, revealing artworks stage by stage, and contributing to the show’s, exploratory and ‘felt’ nature. This arrangement added a sense of discovery…

By Bob Dickinson

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On Friday 15 May 2026, 6-8pm for the Opening Preview of The Felt not Thought… Works on Paper,  artists and collaborators Sarah Kent + Sharon Leahy-Clark created a wonderful new piece whilst visitors were able to watch from the sides. The Live Performance is a hand-drawn piece created by mark-making on paper, the vibrant strokes created in the moment allow the visitors to view an aspect that is usually hidden away in studios, the vulnerability to the piece will be on display from creation and the finished piece was directly installed once completed at the centre of Cross Lane Projects.

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Harriet Bowman’s exhibition Slow Puncture at Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, is reviewed by Martin Holman in Art Monthly (April 2026, issue 495).

Bowman’s casts and constructions offer a relationship between object and meaning that feels inventive, compelling and fresh.

By Martin Holman

Read More at Art Monthly >>

Material, here, takes centre stage, as Bowman has devoted herself to understanding the materials she works with, pushing the boundaries of their purpose and studying them through their industrial contexts. Whether in a leather workshop when she was young, a tannery after art school, or most recently in a tyre yard, Bowman’s interest in these materials goes beyond the realm of the practical. Through the act of recycling, the materials’ story is transformed. From smashed car window or blown out tyre, into art.

In ‘Rehearsal (ii, iii and iv)’ (2026), horsehair is carbonised between two fused glass plates, appearing as slick, cellular shadow worms that curve across a doubled pane. In these three pieces, Bowman’s signature style is everywhere.

By Grace Edwards

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Cross Lane Projects is pleased to present ‘Colour, Light, Sound, Silence’ a two person exhibition by artists Marcus Vergette and Simon Marsh, featuring painting, sculpture and bells.

Marcus Vergette and Simon Marsh met in 1980 on the Fine Art Painting course at Central School of Art & Design in London and have been friends ever since. In the intervening years both artists have continued their practice; Vergette’s focus developed to explore sculpture and sound, Marsh became a printmaker and has recently been exploring stained glass and experimental forms.

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In curating the Confluences exhibition, Rebecca Scott has deliberately sidestepped the standard artworld trope of the artist as exceptional, but inevitably isolated, individual. Although much of the show’s focus is upon Mark Woods (her co-director at Cross Lane Projects), the exhibition also presents sixteen other, mostly contemporary, artists who she recognises as having had a substantial influence upon Woods, though not always in the most obvious of ways.

Sometimes it is a matter of attitude, parallel experiences, friendship or temporary commonality – simply sharing a studio space for a limited time would exemplify the latter; or the influence may be overt and direct in terms of ideas and physical production of work. In this case, the viewer may easily recognise certain technical, material or aesthetic parallels, if and when Woods’ work partly approximates that of another artist…

By Peter Suchin

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“Cross Lane Projects in Kendal presents Confluences, a group exhibition curated by Rebecca Scott, bringing together 17 contemporary artists in celebration of artistic connection, influence, and dialogue.

Rather than a traditional group show, Confluences is a gathering of voices shaped by time, place and shared experience. The exhibition draws on personal and professional journeys of Cross Lane Projects’ co-director Mark Woods, tracing the many creative tributaties he has encountered during his life in London and Cumbria. Each artist featured has, in some way, left a mark – through collaboration, inspiration, or a fleeting but lasting connection.

The result is a rich and multi-layered show that spans painting, sculpture, and installation The title, Confluences, captures the spirit perfectly.”

Featured on the weekly substack.

Confluences begins before you enter Cross Lane Projects, with two rounded, totemic clay sculptures with hollow centres visible from the building’s entrance yard titled ‘Da Fun-fun: Autonomous Resonator Twin’(2005). The clay is calloused; traces of their maker are clear – British-Nigerian sculptor Lawson Oyekan has scored, poked and lacerated them, leaving thin lines and holes across the work. The clay looks like it has dried up, shrivelled and been rehydrated before being slathered with shades of baby blue, pink and yellow pigment – like boiled sweets or rhubarb and custard melted down and smeared on dried earth. An intriguing, tactile start to the exhibition.

by Vaishna Surjid

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Cross Lane Publishing is delighted to present Confluences, curated by Rebecca Scott, this exhibition explores the influences and dialogues between Cross Lane Projects’ co-director Mark Woods and the artists who have crossed his path in his years living in London and Cumbria.

Artists include Mark Woods, Jim Whiting, Stella Whalley, Gavin Turk, Rebecca Scott,
Lawson Oyekan, Michael Petry, Julia Maddison, Lee Holden, Cathy de Monchaux,
Helen Chadwick, Cedric Christie, Louise Bourgeois, Jim Bond, Sooz Belnavis, Atty Bax and
Vanya Balogh.

This publication features an introduction text by Rebecca Scott.

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In Formula + Fetish, the first comprehensive monograph devoted to British artist Mark Woods, readers are drawn into a world where the decorative and the disturbing walk in lockstep. Published to coincide with Wood’s rising prominence beyond the niche spheres of contemporary jewellery and fetish culture, the volume traces four decades of work that refuses categorisation.

The book—structured around four thematic strands: Objects, Staged Self-Portraits, Creative Images, and Jewellery—positions Woods not as a maker of accessories but as an artist fundamentally preoccupied with desire. His work is situated somewhere between reliquary and restraint devices, drawing on materials and forms that evoke ecclesiastical pomp, medical precision, and BDSM pageantry in equal measure.

Critical essays by Paul Carey-Kent, Michael Petry, and Peter Suchin lend further texture to the book, offering overlapping yet distinct readings of Woods’s oeuvre. Carey-Kent considers Woods’s practice as a challenge to the distinctions between object and ornament, while Petry foregrounds the sensuality of the work and its implicit social codes. Suchin takes a more psychoanalytic route, reading the works as fragments of desire caught between repression and excess. The decision to let these voices diverge, rather than forcing a consensus, serves the work well, emphasising its ambiguity and refusal to settle.

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For over three decades, Mark Woods (born 1961 in Surrey, UK) has produced elaborate artefacts that blur the boundaries between jewellery, fine art, fetish objects and items from cabinets of curiosities. Unnerving and evocative, the viewer is confronted with dramatic beauty, sophisticated craftsmanship and an awakening of unexpected emotions. Woods’ works invite you to leave your comfort zone and question human desires.

Published by Black Dog Press, this is the first monograph on the work of Woods, featuring a range of media including sculpture, installation, photography and jewellery-making. The book offers new essays and conversations about his work by leading art critics Paul Carey-Kent, Michael Petry and Peter Suchin, who offer individual and insightful responses to Woods’ world of objects and imagery.

Formula + Fetish is a fully illustrated book that brings together four key aspects of Woods’ practice: “Objects” – luxurious objects of desire and contemporary art fetishes; “Jewellery” – the origins of the artist’s skills in object making; “Photographs” – creative images; and “Self-Portraits” – a performance with the camera lens.

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At first glance, Kendal appears to be a very strait-laced town. Antiques shops and tea rooms adorn the high street in a quintessentially chocolate box aesthetic. Students and septuagenarians sit beneath an idyllic sky. But like always, beneath the surface lies the truth of our desires. We all wear the mask of acceptability for fear of showing too much of ourselves. Normality is the weapon we use to punish the perverse, absurd and taboo thoughts we dare not entertain. What would happen if these worlds were to collide? Doilies and dressing tables, handbags and velvet-lined jewellery boxes acting as the code to unlock our as-yet-unknown pleasures. Could we create the tools we would need to aid our exploration of a thoroughly prim and proper British kink?

By Even Allen

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A hidden Kendal art gallery is spicing up the Lake District.

Cross Lane Projects is tucked away just off the town’s main street, and is based in the old mint cake factory, has been quietly bringing contemporary art exhibitions to the town since 2018.

Its latest exhibition, Formula + Fetish, which will run until June 28, is a striking display of objects that mesh together jewellery, fine art, fetish objects and items from cabinets of curiosities.

By Lucy Edwards

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Steph Huang, a London-based art practitioner working with sculpture, photography, moving image, sound and publication, was awarded the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2023-24 (MTSA). After exhibiting at Standpoint Gallery in London at the end of 2024, her show There is nothing old under the sun began its journey around the UK on the MTSA National Touring Programme. First showing at esea contemporary in Manchester, the show is now at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal, a gallery that maintains a close relationship with the MTSA, having hosted award winners since 2019.

‘Huang has the ability to transform everyday spaces and objects, resulting in minimalist sculptures and poetically charged installations of quiet resonance. For me personally, I love the work ‘Things Which Are Only Themselves’(2024). It’s drawing within a space and transforms in every new location’.

By Vivien Chen

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We are delighted to announce that we are starting the new year exhibiting at London Art Fair.

This year we will be exhibiting artists associated with the gallery programme, including artists from our recent Strange Gaze: Surrealism at Cross Lane Projects exhibition, which continued the world-wide celebrations marking 100 years of Surrealism.

Artists include Alex Giles, Dan Coombs, Denise Hawrysio, Dereck Harris, James Mackie, Mark Woods, Pascal Rousson, Perdita Sinclair, Rebecca Scott, Stella Whalley, Suzy Willey, Wendy Elia, and Sam Jackson and Zavier Ellis, courtesy of Charlie Smith Gallery.

‘These final paintings envisage our planet after humans, when nature takes back what we are destroying. It is painting’s capacity to visualise rather than resolve or repress the complicated mess that constitutes our everyday experience that triumphs in this exhibition. In our hyper-image fixated culture, Strange Gaze offers legibility to our collective unconscious, reminding us of painting’s capacity to show what we conceal in our constant attempts to perfect images, master the landscape and control our bodies. The false promise of digital image perfection brings us only misery. In the slipperiness of surreal paintings, we have space to think differently.’

by Alison J Carr

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Strange Gaze: Surrealism at Cross Lane Projects, continues the world-wide celebrations marking 100 years of surrealism. Today’s neo-surrealism neither smoothly continues surrealism’s original projects, nor makes a clean break with them. Instead, it adapts the pioneers’ discourse to what each artist finds pertinent at the present juncture. The exhibition, curated by the artist Rebecca Scott, brings together 16 artists with dreamlike and figurative works that reference and react to the current political and ecological context.

This publication features original texts:

• The obscure object of neo-surrealism by Glenn Ward.
• Ostranenie in Action by Peter Suchin.
• The Thief of Baghdad by Mike Healey.

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‘As my train rolls into Kendal, I think about how, despite being a stone’s throw away, I’ve never visited before. I’m here now to see Thinking is Making, a group show of ten artists who have all been recipients of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (MTSA) in the past eleven years, spotlighting each individual artist and the richness of their practice, whilst bringing specific works into a wider dialogic space under the shared legacy of the MTSA. Each winner gets a solo show at the Standpoint Gallery in London, which then travels to Cross Lane Projects in Kendal. It feels fitting that Cross Lane Projects is home to such an exhibition given its position in the broader cultural and environmental landscape of the Lake District – a landscape which has historically served as celebrated artistic inspiration… 

While I take in layer after layer, I feel delightfully puzzled. In attempting to determine how and why Reading used these materials, the viewer is exposed to the versatility of the materials. The question is not just about how the artist has used them, but how should we?’

By Amie Kirby

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A group exhibition of Mark Tanner Sculpture Award winners from 2013 to present, continuing the 20th anniversary celebrations of the UK’s most significant sculpture prize.

The sculptural object, like the language used to describe it, is constantly evolving. No more so than in the past 20 years, where the politics of identity, race, gender and global conflicts have snapped at the heels of modernist diktats of form, weight and process. Sculpture can be ephemeral and forever mutating in practice.

This new exhibition presents ten of the most recent artists who have been selected as recipients of the award – Olivia Bax, Megan Broadmeadow, Rosie Edwards, Iain Hales, Lee Holden, Steph Huang, Dean Kenning, Kate Lyddon, Anna Reading and Frances Richardson. The work on show highlights their continuing practice following their year’s tenure and develops our own appreciation of what sculpture is and can be.

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Scott’s paintings draw a parallel with the Géricault work, depicting the plight of migrants today crossing various expanses of water as a direct result of the effects of global capitalist modernity. The chaos of these journeys is at the centre of the exhibition, with the works interpolated by paintings from another series, ‘Family Portraits’, which offer a completely different perspective and, as the accompanying statement suggests, ‘a dialogue between different lives, lived in radically different circumstances, posing questions of empathy and emotional connection with family and strangers alike.’ 

by Anthony Ellis

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The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, by Théodore Géricault on show at the Louvre in Paris shows the bleakest moment, a depiction of the basic human need to survive:

“The figures in the scene are not mythological heroes or brave warriors, but victims of a shipwreck…”

Rebecca Larkin: The harrowing scenes of the famous painting from over 200 years ago mirrors the scenes that we have seen on the news, and social media for a number of years. The similarities are disturbing.

Rebecca Scott: Absolutely. These images have been streaming through and the stories to go alongside what we are seeing are horrific. People fleeing for their lives on these tiny boats – it was reported that five people died in France today trying to cross the water. The disturbing issue is that these stories are getting more and more filtered down, they aren’t being reported on as much now but six months ago, a year ago, the news was daily…

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‘And so to Lee Holden’s compelling exhibition Universal Bridge, currently showing at Kendal’s Cross Lane Projects, which takes those ideas of juxtaposition and association and makes them all the more urgent, profound, unsettling and extraordinary’…

‘Is Universal Bridge a sculpture? An installation? A residency? Cross Lane Projects removed their internal walls to provide Holden with the biggest possible space to work, and the artist has seized the opportunity to reinvent his own process’.

by Simon Sylvester

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Join us as Lee Holden, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award winner (2022/23) discusses his exhibition Universal Bridge with art critic Peter Suchin.

This exhibition titled ‘Universal Bridge’ is a site-specific installation focusing upon the “mindset”, technology, and infrastructure of governance, as well as the potential consequences of resistance to enforced technological change. The piece sets up a complex dialogue between, on the one hand, authority, progress, and control and, on the other, sabotage, disruption, and critique.

Using a vast array of found, collected, and reconfigured materials alongside specifically sourced instruments and tools, Lee Holden transforms Cross Lane Projects so as to suggest a military or government research station devoted to clandestine activities of dubious intent. Something very disturbing happened here: an irreversible accident or transgressive intrusion took place.

This exhibition was developed by artist Lee Holden (b.1972, Accrington, Lancashire, UK), who returns to Kendal after studying Fine Art at Cumbria College of Art & Design,1991-94. Holden is the 20th recipient of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (MTSA).

‘At first, I was trepidatious. I found myself tentatively making my way through an assemblage, or collection of assemblages, consisting of objects sourced from medical, laboratory and communication equipment dating from the late 20th century, all now out of date, and much of it on the large side, though underfoot I had to beware of broken Plexiglas fragments and loose scraps of tape. What, I wondered, would happen if I accidentally moved something bigger? Despite the immediate impression of chaos, it gradually became evident that everything I was seeing, and avoiding tripping over, had been re-systemised: brought together to serve strange, intentional, fictional or imaginary uses or suggestions of what might have been made of them in
an alternative version of British postwar history.

Winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2022/23, which is hosted by Standpoint gallery and studios in London, Lee Holden has expressed an interest not only in secretive governmental and scientific research and infrastructure, but also historical resist ance to it – information about all of which is shady or even suppressed’.

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Published by ‘Black Dog Press’ in celebration of 20 years of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award.

‘Thinking is Making: Objects in a Space’ assembles voices of leading figures of contemporary British sculpture as they examine the relationship between the object and its maker within this mediated field.

 An illustrated conversation between the award’s winners from 2013 to 2023 illuminates the development of diverse sculptural practices, locating sculpture in a space defined by both volumes of creativity and a dearth of access.

And finally, a roundtable discussion between judges Lisa Le Feuvre, Phyllida Barlow, Hew Locke and Mike Nelson speculates on the future of the award, now entering its third decade, as it asks: Who are sculptors today? And what will they make?

Hardback, 28 × 23 cm | 11 × 9 in, 208 pages
ISBN 978-1-912165-46-9

Available to buy from Standpoint Gallery at a special launch price £20 (£29.95 RRP)

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‘People are genuinely curious about how art is made, and we get lots of questions about the art works, and the ideas involved. It has helped us to build some really nice relationships; the local college is involved and some of the schools come through which is good because it allows young people to access contemporary art without having to travel to the big cities. It is a chance for students to speak to an artist and ask the questions they wouldn’t normally get the answers to.’

Our North East editor Lesley Guy @lesleyjguy headed west (via zoom) to chat with Rebecca Larkin @rebeccalarkinfreelance, the Assistant Curator and Projects Manager of Cross Lane Projects in Kendal.

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Photographer and artist Juliet Klottrup sat down with Cross Lane Projects to talk about her films, photography, and painting.

Rebecca Larkin: What photography equipment do you use?

Juliet Klottrup: I have a Medium Format camera, a light metre, and a roll of film. I usually shoot with Kodak Portrait 400. These are with me most of the time when I am shooting.

RL: Do you usually shoot with a tripod?

JK: No, I shoot handheld. I feel like the experience of shooting on medium format, for me, because it is such a large object, it can be a conversation starter, if I’m wandering around in a space, on a fell side, or specifically photographing a group of people or a subject, having the object – although it’s such a big item, it’s kind of unthreatening because there’s an element of curiosity about what you’re holding. I think because my face isn’t concealed, I’m not looking through a view finder, I am looking down… 

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Light and Land explores the relationships between people and place in this beautiful exhibition, archiving the ever-changing social and environmental landscapes of Cumbria. 

Cross Lane Projects, in association with Kendal Mountain Festival, presents the work of local artist Juliet Klottrup and her ongoing investigations into the relationship between the raw natural world and the human connections it inspires. 

The artist sensitively records her interactions with the landscape, looking to capture it in her unique blend of gestural paintings, and landscape and portraiture photography. Going beyond the rural landscape, Light and Land captures the lives of the people of the area, who hold a special connection to the land.

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We are delighted to announce that we will be participating in the British Art Fair, in the SOLO CONTEMPORARY featuring paintings by Rebecca Scott.

Find us in the Solo Contemporary section at stand 12.

‘Top dealers from London and across the UK gather at Saatchi Gallery once a year to present the very best Modern British and Contemporary art and tell visitors all about the artists, their work and give specialist advice on collecting. Galleries are installed throughout all three storeys of Saatchi Gallery, London, creating an elegant museum-like atmosphere for the fair’ – Artlyst

Landscape of the Gods is not your ordinary exhibition of landscape paintings, nor is it an ordinary group show. Some of the art featured here wouldn’t necessarily be labelled as landscape, and the works of the nine diverse artists featured have been intertwined, looped, and contrasted to explore interconnections with each other, and common themes associated with landscape while not necessarily depicting a landscape. The exhibition catalogue identifies the themes explored as the ceremonial, the mythical, the manmade, the dystopian, the inhabited and the emotive. But the binding agent here is the strange movement of time, particularly at the edges and between things. Time moves differently in Landscape of the Gods. It is out of sync, interrupted, distorted, and disjointed through the interweaving of different modes of time at play within the paintings of this exhibition.

by Neil Greenhalgh

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Landscape of the Gods, brings together the work of nine artists to explore an interconnection with the landscape; the ceremonial, the mythical, the manmade, the dystopian, the inhabited and the emotive. Artists include Julian Cooper, Mark Fairnington, Alex Giles, Martin Greenland, Lee Maelzer, Bex Massey, Michael Petry, Alun Williams and Rebecca Scott.

This publication features original texts:

• Introduction by Rebecca Scott.
• Landscape of the Gods by Michael Petry.
• The Prospect of Landscape by Matthew Bowman.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Landscape of the Gods, at Cross Lane Projects.

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For this review Corridor8 Director Lauren Velvick is in conversation with her mum, Bernie Velvick, a community and participatory artist based in Preston whose personal experiences of attending art school as a mature student, consciousness raising, and bereavement are brought to bear on a secluded but compelling exhibition.

The works of both Margaret Harrison and Conrad Atkinson have an immediate impact; often employing techniques, materials and imagery that have been combined to shock, and in this they have been successful. In Late and Soon: The Works of Margaret Harrison and Conrad Atkinson at Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, their work is exhibited together for the first time, having been produced over several decades from their shared studio and shared life as a couple.

by Lauren Velvick & Bernie Velvick

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Ground-breaking feminist artist Margaret Harrison and her late husband Conrad Atkinson spent decades supporting each other as their pioneering works shocked and entertained in equal measure across Europe and America.

But they never had a joint show, until now, a year after his death.

The exhibition Late and Soon: The Works of Margaret Harrison and Conrad Atkinson opened at Cross Lanes Projects in Kendal on Saturday, May 20, and runs until June 24. Cross Lane Projects was founded by artists Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods, with the aim of bringing new contemporary art to Cumbria.

by Mike Glover

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A new exhibition of works by feminist artist Margaret Harrison and her late husband Conrad Atkinson will open at Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, this month. It is a rare opportunity to see the work of these two important artists together, and it is, in fact, the first time they have ever exhibited together. Late and Soon: The Works of Margaret Harrison and Conrad Atkinson at Cross Lane Projects looks at a lifetime of ground-breaking work from two artists who should be considered national treasures but are most certainly considered national provocateurs.

PayneShurvell, formerly a contemporary art gallery in Shoreditch, founded by art historian/curator James Payne and communications specialist/writer Joanne Shurvell, has partnered with Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, to present the exhibition, which will feature both historic and recently created works.

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‘Instead of seeking to assert power over materials, I prefer to “listen” to them and be responsive to their prompts’, wrote British sculptor Rosie Edwards in a short text published to accompany her MA show at the Royal College of Art. A little over a decade later, the avoidance of control as a method of approach to sculpture remains at the heart of Edwards’ latest body of work, presented in the show Genetic Material at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal.

Edwards is the nineteenth recipient of a prestigious award for emerging artists working in the field of sculpture in the UK. The Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (MTSA) offers up to £10,000 in financial support towards the making of new work as well as a three-gallery touring show starting at Standpoint Gallery in London, which maintains a mentoring role over the twelve-month programme.

by Nia Thomas

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Richard Ducker’s practice as a visual artist has brought together a wide variety of processes: sculpture-installation, sound, wall text, and video that suggest narratives of displacement and engender a sense of ‘wrong place, wrong time’. Over the last 3 years Ducker’s practice has moved almost exclusively into film-making, developing some of the themes from my installations. Ian Thompson is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, London, teaching sound design and production across film and digital arts programmes. He’s a member of the SOUND/IMAGE research group, with interests in; spatial audio, sound design in virtual production, soundscape research, and environmental sound recording. 

Neil Greenhalgh is an artist, writer, and educator, currently working on a number of community art projects alongside his painting practice and full time job teaching Fine Art at University of Bolton.

‘The Accurate Perception Available When Our Eye Becomes Single’ is an immersive multi-screen installation evoking the emotional specifics of place, while exploring the elasticity of time and history. It is an audio-visual collaboration between artists Richard Ducker (video) and Ian Thompson (sound) with no linear narrative; sound and image are not synchronised, so each viewing is a unique experience.

Performance by Sarah Sparkes.

Rebecca Scott, Director at Cross Lane Projects sat down with artists Richard Ducker and Ian Thompson to discuss the origins and process behind their upcoming immersive multi-screen installation ‘The Accurate Perception Available When Our Eye Becomes Single’.

Rebecca Scott: We are thrilled to be exhibiting ‘The Accurate Perception Available When Our Eye Becomes Single’ in Kendal.  The piece is an audio-visual collaboration with no linear narrative; imagery and sound are not synchronised, so each visitor has aunique experience.

Richard Ducker: Yes, the exhibition consists of five film projections and an independent, asynchronous soundtrack, created by Ian. It is an immersive sense of being in a particular landscape, where the viewer can move between the different projections in their own time… 

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Throughout the show, certain motifs and visual dynamics are echoed by individual works, including modes of visual interpretations and punctuation, along with the use of space and subtext. In this way, High on Hope can be read almost like a mixtape – using the combination of multiple artists to tell a unique story in subtle and intricate ways. The tempos, rhythms, and narratives that unfold are described by curator Rebecca Scott as ‘trickles of thought’ that suggest potential readings and questioning of those readings, without overbearing or muting the independence of each work.

The gallery space is divided into three zones. The diagonal central wall is cleverly placed to physically suggest a direction of travel without feeling overly prescriptive. Following this curatorial passage shows that the works exist in open dialogue with each other, backwards and forwards.

by Neil Greenhalgh

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High on Hope was conceived as a memorial exhibition for the artist Gerard Hemsworth (1945 – 2021). It brings together a selection of Hemsworth’s canvases and work by eight other artists whom he taught, on the part-time Master’s programme at Goldsmith’s College in South London, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The exhibition, curated by artist Rebecca Scott, focuses on artists whose work she sees as resonating with Hemsworth’s own engagement in a type of ‘post-conceptual figurative or representational painting’. Artists include Mark Fairnington, Roy Holt, Gerard Hemsworth, Rebecca Scott, Bob & Roberta Smith, Jessica Voorsanger, Mark Wallinger and Suzy Willey.

This publication features original texts:

• Introduction by Daniel Sturgis.
• (Post-) Conceptual Painting by Julien Delagrange.
• A Letter by Dr Mo Throp.

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‘There’s also a visit to High on Hope, the new exhibition at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal’ 

Featuring a chat with Rebecca Scott, co-director of Cross Lane Projects and curator of High on Hope.

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Essay on the Occasion of the Group Show High On Hope at Cross Lane Projects.

Cross Lane Projects invited our artistic director Julien Delagrange to write an essay on conceptual painting and post-conceptual figurative painting for the exhibition catalogue of the group exhibition High On Hope. The show features a selection of works by Mark Fairnington, Gerard Hemsworth, Roy Holt, Rebecca Scott, Bob & Roberta Smith, Michael Stubbs, Jessica Voorsanger, Mark Wallinger and Suzy Willey.

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An exhibition celebrating the life and work of Gerard Hemsworth will open later this month in a former Kendal Mint cake factory in Kendal, Cumbria, in north-west England. The show, High on Hope (22 July-24 September) pays tribute to the influential former professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, bringing together works by eight artists Hemsworth taught on the MFA Fine Art Programme at Goldsmiths in the 1980s and 1990s.

The alumni roll-call is impressive with Mark Wallinger, Bob & Roberta Smith and Jessica Voorsanger among the participating artists honouring the late academic and artist (the late Roy Holt also features). The show, organised by the contemporary art organisation Cross Lane Projects, also includes a selection of Hemsworth’s canvases. Rebecca Scott, who is behind the homage, says in a statement: “Hemsworth as a teacher and artist influenced a huge number of artists working in all fields of art. This exhibition includes those whose work I feel best echoes Gerard’s values.” Cross Lane Projects, which is funded by Scott and another artist Mark Woods, “brings new contemporary art to Cumbria” but also has a foothold in London, launching a new gallery space in Vestry Street (go see works by Nicola Bealing, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Denise de Cordova in the launch show, A Modern Capricho).

A memorial exhibition to artist/teacher Gerard Hemsworth (1945-2021) opens next week at  Cross Lane Projects in Kendal. It is the most extensive exhibition of contemporary painting held at the project space to date. As a teacher and artist, Hemsworth influenced a large number of artists working in all fields of art. Hemsworth began teaching on the MA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths College, the University of London, in the 1980s, becoming Professor of Fine Art in 2004 until 2011. His students included Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger and nominees Fiona Banner and Glenn Brown.

‘High on Hope’ brings together a selection of Hemsworth’s canvases alongside the work of eight artists he taught on the Master’s programme at Goldsmiths in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The exhibition, devised by the painter and co-founder of Cross Lane Projects, Rebecca Scott, focuses on artists whose work she sees as resonating with Hemsworth’s own engagement with a type of “post-conceptual figurative or representational painting”.

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The current exhibition at Cross Lane Projects in Kendal is called 4 – a clever title that neatly squares up the work of four distinctive artists, Lawson Oyekan, Gavin Turk, William Plumptre and Nicola Tassie. Implying both allegory and category, the title 4 presents the audience with several ways to interpret the intention behind the selection of these seemingly contrasting art practices: an even quartering, or the cardinal points on a compass (with a central point of convergence) perhaps. Selected and curated by gallery Director Rebecca Scott, the chosen works occupy the four corners of the gallery and represent the unique relationship between each artist and their shared material. Placed together in one compact space the artworks demonstrate the extent of clay’s timeline from artefact, to utilitarian craft object and modern artform, whilst also acknowledging the ascension of clay as an artist’s medium particularly in fine art approaches since the early 2000’s.

by Sam Pickett

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Rebecca Scott: When did you start to explore ceramics and what made you continue with it as the main focus of your practice?

Nicola Tassie: I took up ceramics soon after leaving art school where I had studied painting. My main interest was in the use of materials; I was putting sand into the paint and using lots of different drawing materials. Subject engagement became secondary. Clay materials did not feel too different, but I found the regulated process quite liberating. Form making and surface are interdependent. I was throwing on the wheel, making tableware objects and this ‘crafted’ domestic scale of working, in relation to my past experience as an ‘artist’ painter, soon evolved as a subject.

William Plumptre: My first experience of clay was at senior school. It was not exploratory as such, but I was intrigued and delighted by the results of simple throwing and firing pots…

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Curated by Rebecca Scott, this new group exhibition foregrounds the diverse ceramic practices of four leading contemporary artists: Lawson Oyekan, William Plumptre, Nicola Tassie and Gavin Turk.

Cross Lane Projects is one of several contemporary galleries showcasing an exciting mix of clay work at the moment, positioning what perhaps previously would have been seen as ‘pottery’ in dialogue with more conceptual art works.

Nicola Tassie (b.1960) is a London based ceramicist whose work integrates the traditions of studio pottery, with a conceptual and material exploration of the nature and function of form and aesthetics. Tassie has created a new body of work specifically for this show that confronts the relationship between the interior domestic scene and exterior landscape. Familiar domestic pots are piled up and arranged into larger scale works that specifically reference dry-stone walls, steppingstones, and gateways. Serving as both boundaries and entries, the works suggest ideas of containment and aspiration, and the contested definition between craft and art.

Gavin Turk (b. 1967) is a London based artist known for his pioneering work within many forms of sculpture. His work consists in analysing and questioning the concepts of fame, authorship and originality that continue to affect our understanding of art and the artist. En Face, the work presented in this exhibition is the product of an interactive performance where Turk invited people to manipulate wet clay depicting the artist. Each of the busts became unique with the marks made by the visitors making it more personal to the public and less personal to the artist.

Join the artists and curator for an informal walk through of this new exhibition in Kendal.

Published by Cross Lane Publishing on the occasion of Evolutionary Love by Dean Kenning, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award exhibition.

The book includes essays by Martha Barratt and John Roberts and Conversations with Emma Hart and Lindsey Seers.

Available to purchase from the gallery shop at Cross Lane Projects.

Having won the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award in 2020, the current exhibition at Cross Lane Projects is touring various UK galleries. Arriving at the project space, I’m greeted by Gallery Project Manager, Rebecca Larkin. Straight away I see three of Kenning’s robot crawlers, with their exposed batteries, circuits, and cameras, in amongst a tangle of colourful wiring. They’re difficult to ignore as they limp and struggle across the grey floor, pulled along by their two flailing limbs. I have a quick chat with Rebecca, who has developed a knowledge of the crawler’s functions and idiosyncrasies. I get the impression it’s a bit like looking after a friend’s pet, with patterns of behaviour to get your head around. She mentions that they are drawn to bodies, heat and, with the right provocation, they’ll start doing a humming sound.

by Anthony Ellis

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The Cross Lane Projects will reopen this month with an exhibition by Dean Kenning, winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2020/21.

Dean Kenning is known for his kinetic and sound sculptures, as well as videos and diagrams. His work is produced through hands-on material and process-based experimentation, and in the spirit of DIY problem solving.

Kenning has used his lockdown this time to extend the possibilities for his kinetic sculptural practice. For ’Evolutionary Love’ in Kendal, Kenning has produced a series of semi-autonomous, interactive creatures, which crawl and drag themselves continuously around the gallery, avoiding obstacles and interacting with visitors and each other – the effect is more ‘animalistic’ than ‘robotic’ as the focus remains on the aesthetics of movement, particularly nervous or compulsive movement.

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James Payne explores the curious uncanny and taboo world of Mark Woods in his exhibition Absorption at Cross Lane Projects, Kendal.

When we think of the Lake District, we think of British classics like Swallows and Amazons, fell walking and daffodils. A host of them.

But a recent visit had me thinking more along the lines of Powell and Pressburger’s “Peeping Tom”, Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”, and Marcel Duchamp’s last work.

Mark Wood’s new show “Absorption” at Cross Lane projects in Kendal is at times disturbing, uncomfortable and challenging. And for those reasons, it is not to be missed!

To use a current expression bandied about the art world, this is an “immersive” experience, but unlike those commercial blockbusters doing the rounds now, this is not only a much more intimate experience, but it is also bonkers and brilliant.

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A year since Corridor8 reviewed the group exhibition Made With… at Cross Lane Projects, artist Mark Woods – one of those on display in Made With… – returns with the solo exhibition Absorption.

Cross Lane Projects itself is a nondescript building, hidden away up a narrow lane. You’d never expect that it would house as bold an exhibition as Woods’. An outdoor mural titled ‘SNAP’ (2021) by Manchester-based artist Alex Giles has recently been commissioned to add a pop of colour to the former mint cake factory on the adjacent wall to the gallery, guiding passers-by to the independent venue.

by Danielle Ash

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VB: How would you define this exhibition in comparison to all the other shows you have exhibited in, in terms of ambience, the concept, and complexity of it.

MW: It is an accumulation of earlier shows. Some of these objects I have presented 3, 4, 5 times. When you start putting them together, they become a different thing but also the same. What I am ultimately realising is that even though I am moving on and developing – using photography and making objects – it is the same thing. It becomes wider but it is always the same thing.

VB: In terms of the viewer and the way they enter the exhibition becoming immersed in the space. Comparing that to other works where the audience is on the outside, here they suddenly find themselves part of the installation. Would you say that absorption happens here?

MW: I like how you have observed that things are now becoming far more internalised, the space has, like you said, people in it and they are being absorbed, but they are absorbing the experience of being within something…

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A new outdoor painting has become the latest addition to Cross Lane Projects’ free contemporary art offering in Kendal.

Located on the side of a building on Cross Lane in Kirkland, adjacent to Cross Lane Projects gallery, a new painting has been composed of large circular forms on a geometric backdrop.

The artist behind the work is Manchester based artist Alex Giles, who is best known for his bold, multi-coloured vibrant paintings.

The project was created by the gallery director Rebecca Scott, who commissioned the artist to create a piece of artwork creating colour outside the former Kendal Mint Cake factory and bring art for all into the local community.

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Olivia Bax, Roller I, 2020. Courtesy of Cross Lane Projects.

“The size and colours of this painting are the dream of any collector who is in search of a dramatic purchase.”

“The pieces selected all have a certain quality that binds them together. There are landscapes that call into question environmental concerns from flooding to desolation. However, there are works that are more celebratory such as Oliva Bax’s wonderful and functional bench and Abe Odedina’s “Measure for Measure” which presents you with part of a story and does the thing that art can do so well, which allows you, the viewer, space to fill in the gaps, using your own imagination to complete the narrative. There is a range of more experienced practitioners and emerging, I am pleased that LAF makes space for artists at all stages in their careers.”

– Cherie Federico, Managing Director, Aesthetica Magazine.

Presented by Cross Lane Projects at London Art Fair: Edit 2021.

“Olivia is one of the best young sculptors working today. She was a finalist in the Ingram Prize and had some great projects and shows recently. One to watch!”

– Jo Baring, Director, The Ingram Collection

London Art Fair: Edit 2021 launches online this week, presenting work from over 60 leading contemporary galleries. As part of this year’s extensive programme – which encompasses panel discussions, artists insights and workshops – LAF invites experts to present personal highlights from their Viewing Rooms.

Aesthetica Managing Director Cherie Federico has chosen six stand-out artworks. “The pieces selected all have a certain quality that binds them together,” she explains. “There are landscapes that call into question environmental concerns – from flooding to desolation.”  Bax works at the intersection of drawing, architecture and public space. The artist explored new terrain with Roller 1. The bold yellow form is Bax’s functioning sculpture; at once artwork and seating area.

“It engulfs you visually because of its bright yellow, but to find out it is functional and serving as a bench to view other artworks is just amazing. I love the cross over between sculpture and design here.”

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Walking into the space you are hit by layers of colour, texture, form and scale as your eye catches sight of all of the works, yet none quite fully. The first work you come to is in an alcove space of its own, perfectly proportionate to the work itself. This is ‘Grille (Portrait)’ (2020), which has a twin work in the main space; ‘Grille (Landscape)’ (2020). Both throw clean, bold shadows across the nearby walls and floor, giving the works additional depth and extending their linearity out like arms into the space. Their dusty terracotta colour, vessel-like receptacles and parallel metal bars – some uncoated and some built up with rough paper pulp – are immediately reminiscent of both my farm upbringing and, contrastingly, the sea of balconies and window bars common to densely populated urban areas. Surprisingly these are influences Bax does in fact reference – architecture and the extension of personal space via balconies, as well as the utilitarian nature of agricultural forms that are visible throughout this exhibition.

by Laura Biddle

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Emma Cousin: You have described your steel armatures as ‘drawing in space’ which become a tool to build. I wondered how these drawings come to you? Are the armatures the “grid” that you’ve gone off?

Olivia Bax: I doodle in my notepad to record or think about forms I have seen which interest me. These early sketches are almost always linear. For example, over the last year I’ve been drawing window grilles, plant holders, hay feeders, air vents and appliances. I use steel to make the armatures because the process of cutting, bending and welding is quick and intuitive. This means that my armatures don’t need to follow a pre-formulated plan but can become something new in three-dimensions. Then the armatures become exactly what you said – “a grid to go off”…

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In Made With… curator John Stephens stages something of a two-for-one – old work and new, the found and the formed – encouraging visitors into socially-distanced pirouettes between the jostling sculptural forms.

Through this approach, the ‘constructive’ borders the ‘entropic’ in a manner that encourages the viewer to consider those ideas of interrelatedness and consequence which underpin the oft-quoted ‘primacy of materials’ so familiar to modern sculptural praxis.

by Daniel Newsham

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During lockdown, Cross Lane Projects interviewed John Stephens, the curator for Made With… featuring artists Maxine Bristow, Anna Fairchild, Sian-Kate Mooney and Mark Woods, on the initial idea for the exhibition and how the design and curation of the show was conceived.

CLP: What was it about these four artists that made you want to create this exhibition?

John Stephens: In early 2018 I was having a conversation with Maxine Bristow, about a recent body of her work: conceived as a series of variable installations that drew on a catalogue of three-dimensional elements fabricated with materials commonly used in furnishings; upholstery, woven textiles, steel, plastics… I have known Maxine for a long time and am very familiar with the evolution of her work over the years. And I knew about the close relationship she is keen to establish between the materiality of her work and the significance it had in terms of the cultural associations that we make with it…

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During lockdown, curator John Stephens chatted to the artists about their work, creative process and the Made With… exhibition.

John Stephens: As the curator, I thought of your inclusion in the show based on what I knew about your interests in material(s) and the unique ways in which you use them. Can you say something about your materials and why you use them or what you have in mind when you’re working with them?

Maxine Bristow: The materials I choose to work with are generally those that are entangled in day-to-day reality and embedded in the spatial practices, corporeal habits, and repeated routines of our everyday experience. They are materials that constitute the fabric of interior environments and silently form the backdrop to our mundane actions and are manufactured into the functioning objects through which we invisibly mediate our relationship with the world… 

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A Kendal art gallery which is rapidly gaining national reputation since being set up in 2018 is preparing for a major new exhibition of contemporary sculpture.

Cross Lane Projects curator John Stephens has brought together four artists for the exhibition of contemporary sculpture.

Artists Maxine Bristow, Anna Fairchild, Sian-Kate Mooney and sculptor Mark Woods will be showing their work from March 21.

The Cross Lane Projects gallery, housed in a converted Mint Cake factory in central Kendal, was founded in 2018 by artist Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods, and has already proved a big success, attracting people from all over the country.

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Artist Anna Reading leads a tour of her solo exhibition The Pothole at Cross Lane Projects, followed by a Q&A.

Installed across a floor of vinyl collages, Anna Reading’s The Pothole presents a series of new sculpture and performance works developed over the past year as the 16th recipient of major UK award, the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award.

Combining layers of surplus commodity materials, including shredded foam, gravel, oyster shells, bitumen, chip forks and cardboard, Reading creates a highly tactile and fragmented environment. Her sculptures appear familiar and puzzling at once, existing between life form and architecture, ancient and futuristic and decay and regeneration.

Anna Reading (b. 1987, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK) is a London based artist and a graduate of MFA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art (2017), where she received the Siva-Finestone Scholarship, and holds a BA (Hons) Fine Art, Central St Martins (2010). Her work was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018. Recent exhibitions include Sugar Mountain,The Silver Building, London, Shell Shelter and Raven Ravine with Pallas Citroen, The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London, Everything, Assembly Point, London. A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Art Foundation, Athens. Cloud Concrete, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London. POND, Kaitak Gallery, Hong Kong. Loop, Lubomirov / Angus Hughes, London and Object 77B, Laure Genillard, London.

Reading was selected from 260 applicants from across the UK by a panel comprising Clare Lilley, Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Cathie Pilkington RA, Frances Richardson MTSA winner 2017-18, and Rebecca Scott, artist and Mark Tanner Trust.

Cross Lane Projects is staging a solo exhibition of new work by Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2018/19 winner Anna Reading.

Installed across a floor of vinyl collages, Anna Reading’s The Pothole presents a series of new sculpture and performance works developed over the past year as the 16th recipient of the major UK award.

Combining layers of surplus commodity materials, including shredded foam, gravel, oyster shells, bitumen, chip forks and cardboard, Anna creates a highly tactile and fragmented environment. Her sculptures appear familiar and puzzling at once, existing between life form and architecture, ancient and futuristic and decay and regeneration.

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A rare opportunity to welcome and listen to Durk Dehner, Founder Director of the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, in conversation with Paul Gravett.

An opportunity to delve deeper into the extraordinary life and works of this gay icon and superlative cartoonist and to find out more about how his legacy lives on. 

Durk Dehner‘s creative background includes film direction, publishing, public relations and marketing, editing and production, photography, art collecting, public speaking, writing and event production.

He co-founded the Tom of Finland Foundation with Touko Laaksonen, a.k.a. Tom of Finland, in 1984.Dedicated to preserving, collecting and exhibiting homoerotic art, the Tom of Finland Foundation is today a registered historic landmark in Los Angeles, California. The original mission of the foundation was to protect the large collection of Tom of Finland artworks, this mission has since expanded to serve as a erotic art archive, protecting such work from discrimination and destruction, alongside advocating healthier and more tolerant attitudes about sexuality.

Paul Gravett is a London-based freelance journalist, curator, lecturer, writer, and broadcaster, who has worked in comics publishing and promotion since 1981.

TOURISTS FLOCK to Kendal, a town in north-west England, for its rural beauty, tea rooms and mint cake (a local sugary confection favoured by hikers). Few day-trippers expect to stumble across an exhibition of gay erotica. Yet earlier this month, as part of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Kendal hosted “Let’s Go Camping with Tom of Finland”, a show of work by the 20th-century artist.

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Visually rich and conceptually diverse, Auto-Destruct uses a wide range of artworks to offer an insight into the psychopathology of our love-hate relationship with the car and to allude to the bleak social and environmental consequences of a world dependent on it. The familiar trope of the car as emblematic of a sleek, seductive glamour is almost entirely absent here. Rather, going pointlessly around in circles, like the pickup truck in Steve Carr’s Burnout, or immobile like Elena Montesinos’ Oil, Oil, Oil (Morte aux Vaches), a car outside the gallery encased in a custom-made vinyl cover, the journey of the automobile as a symbol of technological advance or social progress has come to a messy and faltering standstill.

by Derek Horton

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In a special finissage event for Auto-Destruct at Cross Lane Projects, we welcome two of the exhibition’s curators – Stacie McCormick and Pascal Rousson – whose work is included in the show, and who will be in conversation with fellow Auto-Destruct artist Lee Holden (work pictured). A great opportunity to learn more about the work of  these artists as well as the ideas behind the exhibition.

Lee Holden has exhibited widely at both national and international venues. Recent exhibitions include the group show 17×24, Every Day is Good Day, at Magazin 4 Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria (2018), the group show I Can’t Go On, I Go On, at Gallery 46, London (2018), video work (in collaboration with artist Josephine Wood) screened as part of Sick Monday held at the Genesis Cinema, London (26th March 2018), a group show Feed London’s Hungry– Felix Projects at The Nunnery Gallery, London (2017) and solo show Insnar’d with Flow’rs, I Fall on Grass, at Angus Hughes Gallery, London (2014). He currently teaches on the Fine Art and Digital Media Courses at Lewisham Southwark College.

Stacie McCormick (b. 1962 in USA) Is a multidisciplinary artist. Conceptual pieces for Auto-Destruct came from a long established conflict of the love of car design as well as the romance of their glamour at odds with the damage inflicted. McCormick also paints from the layered evidence of time in the urban landscape. Documenting, photographing and sketching from the city environ, McCormick endeavours to emulate this layered evidence of time in her gestural abstract painting practice. The happened upon is often enough and results in an photograph or will form the basis of a series of paintings. McCormick’s recent solo exhibition In Search of Paintings (Meno Parkas, Kaunas, Lithuania).

Pascal Rousson (b. 1963) graduated from Beaux Arts de Lyon in 1985, and from Geneva School of Visual Art in 1991. Rousson now lives and works in London. His latest works are part of a series in which he is revisiting Cubism through popular culture. In this case with a cover version of Picasso’s 1910 Portrait of Wilhem Unde as Iggy Pop or Georges Braque’s 1913 Woman with a Guitar as Black Sabbath; re-enacting through painting the idea of fragmentation, collage and cut-out of the subject, as in Cubist paintings, where figures and objects were dissected, cut or “analysed” into a multitude of small facets.

Auto-Destruct is the summer exhibition for the region’s latest art space. Adding another dimension to an already vibrant cultural scene, Cross Lane Projects opened its fresh and innovative doors last year in the former Kendal Mint Cake factory.

Located on Cross Lane, just behind Kirkland, the gallery gives extra gravitas to Kendal’s existing creative offer that includes nationally important centres of creativity such as Abbot Hall Art Gallery – which has a major redevelopment in the pipeline – and the boundary pushing Brewery.

Cross Lane Projects was put together by Cumbrian artist Rebecca Scott and her sculptor husband Mark Woods, with its inaugural exhibition featuring prints by Dame Paula Rego and new works by Rebecca.

The creative couple have gained a reputation and recognition for bringing new contemporary art and challenging debate to the county with a programme of exhibitions and events featuring the work of local, international and British artists.

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In its first exhibitions of 2019, Flugblätter and Miniscule Part 2, Cross Lane Projects presents the work of over 360 artists from around the world. Join us for a special event on 18 April with Birgit Jensen, Dusseldorf-based artist and curator of Flugblätter and Vanya Balogh, the  artist-curator behind Miniscule.

Jensen and Balogh will discuss their respective large-scale curating projects and draw out connections and points of difference, while also introducing and taking questions on their respective shows.

Flugblätter is curated by artist Birgit Jensen who asked her diverse international network of visual artists to respond to the latest developments in a globalised world. She asked the artists what position they took; how the changes and attendant social tensions and conflicts influenced their work? How they positioned themselves in relation to the transformations of our society in recent years and their local impacts? Each artist sent her one image and an accompanying text by email to create a travelling exhibition that has now been shown in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and comes to the UK for the first time at Cross Lane Projects.

In Miniscule Part 2, artists were invited by curator Vanya Balogh to submit a diminutive art object of any genre or media but with one simple proviso: the maximum size of the work is that of the common matchbox; 2” by 1.5”. For most of the artists participating, the format is an intriguing challenge; a stimulus or provocation; a playful distraction from their normal artistic practice.

Poised at the entrance to the Cumbrian gallery (a converted warehouse, formerly part of the Kendal Mint Cake factory), I found myself on the narrow shore of a vast sea of paper; each page gently floating – or ‘fluttering’, as the onomatopoeic title of the exhibition invites – on the air currents in the room, suspended just above head-height from a maze of criss-crossing string. The scene appeared calm – until entered, at which point it became a struggle not to drown amidst the tumult of responses to Jensen’s deceptively-simple set of provocations. Expressions of anger, hope, apathy, love, despair, humour and disinclination buffet the viewer back and forth through the space; coming together to form strong tides of shared sentiment and spiralling off into eddies of individual singularity.

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Cross Lane Projects in Kendal opens two exhibitions this week with a consciously international list of artists in the run-up to Brexit*. Flugblätter and Miniscule 2 features artists from across the globe to create a wide-ranging show questioning aspects of modern society.

Rebecca Scott, Co-Founder of Cross Lane Projects, comments of the forthcoming exhibitions: “We are proud to be international in outlook and to celebrate collaborations with artists in Europe, at a time when our future relationship with Europe is much-debated. Our spring exhibitions are Flugblätter, curated by Düsseldorf-based artist Birgit Jensen, and Miniscule Part 2, curated by Croatian-born independent curator and artist, Vanya Balogh.

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Cross Lane Projects is a new initiative that makes a significant contribution to the cultural life of Kendal and the wider Cumbrian region. Located in a back street just a few short steps from the town’s Abbot Hall Art Gallery, the unpromising exterior of this large former factory building opens into a pristine and airy white walled gallery. Recently opened by the artists Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods, the building also houses their expansive workshop and studios, and they deserve huge credit for creating a contemporary art space for which they have ambitious plans in a region where such venues are few and far between.

Their second exhibition is the only showing outside London for this year’s prestigious Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and is the first of what will be an annual event, bringing the prize from the capital to be shown in the rural north-west of England. This year’s awardee, Frances Richardson, is showing a body of new work investigating the dualities of objects and space, thought and measurement, emotions and intellect, under the title Not even nothing can be free of ghosts.

By Derek Horton

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An introduction to the new Mark Tanner Sculpture Award exhibition, Not even nothing can be free of ghosts

We’re delighted to welcome artist Frances Richardson to discuss her exhibition Not even nothing is free of ghosts at Cross Lane Projects. Frances Richardson is the winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award for 2017/18.

The event will consist of a walk-through tour of the exhibition led by the artist, introducing individual works and taking questions from the audience.

Marking a significant development in Richardson’s practice, the exhibition Not even nothing can be free of ghosts presents a group of new works referencing the image of water and water’s metaphorical use to suggest state of mind. The artist is fascinated by the potential of things and places to hold information that is not explicit or measurable by traditional observation. Her new work aims to provoke a visceral as well as intellectual response in the viewer. Frances Richardson’s exhibition has been developed over the period of a year, as the 15th winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award.

Frances Richardson (born 1965 in Leeds, UK) received her MA in Fine Art Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 2006. Previous to this she studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design, Norwich. Richardson exhibits both nationally and internationally. Key solo exhibitions include: In times of brutal instability, Chiara Williams Contemporary Art, London Art Fair 2018, In Time, Coffeeismycupoftea Space, London 2018, Performed object: Fig.090616, Concrete Canvas, Trefforest Industrial Estate, Cardiff 2016, Loss of object and bondage to it Fig.2, Bermondsey Square Sculpture Commission, Vitrine Gallery, London 2015, Loss of object and bondage to it, Lubomirov- Easton, London 2014 and Ideas in the Making: drawing structure, Trinity Contemporary, London 2011. 

Nestled into Kendal’s cultural quarter, Cross Lane Projects is a gallery space situated in the former Kendal Mint Cake factory, on Cross Lane, off Kirkland. Opened by artists Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods in June, the aim of CLP is to bring new contemporary art and debate to Cumbria.

Next in Rebecca and Mark’s exhibition programme is Frances Richardson’s Not Even Nothing Can Be Free Of Ghosts.

Frances was the recipient of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2017/18.

Coordinated by London’s Standpoint Gallery, the sculpture award is one of the most significant awards for emerging artists working in the field of sculpture in the UK.

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In a special finissage event for the exhibition Female Trouble at Cross Lane Projects, we welcome songwriter and musician Viv Albertine to discuss her celebrated recent memoir To Throw Away Unopened with BBC Arts Producer and co-programmer of Borderlines Book Festival, Carlisle, Serena Field.

“Nestled into the town’s cultural quarter, Cross Lane Projects is a gallery space situated in the former Kendal Mint Cake factory, on Cross Lane, off Kirkland, a stone’s throw from Abbot Hall. Opened by artists Rebecca Scott and Mark Woods in June, the aim of CLP is to bring new contemporary art and debate to Cumbria. Their exhibition programme opened with Female Trouble with top flight artist Paula Rego and paintings by Rebecca, who has work in private and public collections nationally and internationally and has exhibited far and wide. Rebecca works from photographs, taking images from sources such as calendars, catalogues and magazines, and drawn to aspects of private manifestations and public representations of female desire.”

An exciting new addition to the region’s visual arts world has opened its doors.

Kendal’s vibrant art scene has gained a fresh contemporary space created by Cross Lane Projects in a former Kendal Mint Cake factory. Cross Lane Projects was put together by Cumbria-born artist Rebecca Scott and her sculptor husband Mark Woods, with its inaugural exhibition featuring prints by Dame Paula Rego and new works by Rebecca.

The creative pair aims to bring new contemporary art and debate to Cumbria with an exciting curated programme featuring the work of local, international and British artists. The space will present a regularly changing programme of two exhibitions of contemporary art each year, accompanied by public talks and discussion events.

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We’re delighted to have welcomed our first guests at the opening event for Cross Lane Projects on 28 June, Cross Lane Projects is a new art space in Kendal founded by Cumbria-born artist Rebecca Scott and her partner Mark Woods, a sculptor. The event included a special preview of our inaugural exhibition Female Trouble – Paula Rego & Rebecca Scott.

Scott and Woods have established Cross Lane Projects with the aim of bringing new contemporary art and debate to Cumbria and will present a curated programme featuring the work of local, international and British artists. The space will present a regularly changing programme of three exhibitions of contemporary art each year, accompanied by public talks and discussion events.