“The idea is not to come up from London and tell everyone up North how to do it”: Will Lunn, NORTH

Ryan Gander, Samsons Push or Compositie. Photo courtesy Ken Adlard

Do artists based in the North of England have an inferiority complex? And what would Venice Biennale look like if it was based in Warrington? We find out from the lead curator of NORTH Contemporary, Will Lunn…

London-based gallerist Will Lunn has just launched NORTH: a brand new festival representing contemporary art from the North of England, through focus exhibitions, talks and pavilions. Closely partnered with Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival, NORTH will occupy multiple venues across the city next month; from the Pyramid Art Centre to station platforms and ex-retail units (including a former bank).

Highlighting ambitious institutions outside London through its pavilions — including pop-up gallery MODEL (Liverpool), S1 gallery (Sheffield), Bureau gallery (Manchester) and Platform A arts space (Middlesbrough) – NORTH also brings together an impressive set of artwork for its main focus exhibition, The Dream Of Modern Living? – from Joe Scanlan’s DIY coffins to Ryan Gander’s re-purposed Ikea furniture.

We spoke to Lunn about curating the festival, Northern ‘identity’, and being influenced by the Venice Biennale

“There’s always something that can be done – something bigger and better than seems possible in the current situation”

On coming up with the idea of NORTH:

“Warrington Contemporary Art Festival wanted to bring us in as guest curators, but I couldn’t see what could be done to move things forward without damaging the benefits to local people of the existing offering. There was also a feeling of being overshadowed by Liverpool and Manchester and that it could not compete with events like the Liverpool Biennial. This was oddly quite inspiring. There’s always something that can be done – something bigger and better than seems possible in the current situation.”

On being the first to establish a contemporary art festival focused solely on the North:

“A few of the [Northern arts] institutions we have spoken with were thinking along similar same lines, even bouncing around the same name, but looking towards funding applications to be realised a fair way into the future. If we had done things differently and planned out NORTH as a funding application from the beginning, we probably could have up-scaled things significantly but that would have meant waiting. We hope that in the future we can work with these other like-minded organisations to bring about something even bigger and better.

Will Lunn at Copperfield Gallery, London

“The great thing about seizing the opportunity here in Warrington has been speed. It’s going to kick things off for NORTH while the time is right, not two years later; and I hope it will also boost what is already being done in Warrington, where hosting the events might have greater impact than on one of the larger cities. We are trying to do the absolute maximum possible with the resources that we’ve got, now.”

On referencing the Venice Biennale, and what pavilions for the North of England could look like:

“Some of The Venice Biennale left a sour taste this year… it just left me feeling a bit hollow. I was on the plane back thinking how lovely it would be to go somewhere really low-key, like an old shop, and find it had been taken over by, say, ‘The Newcastle Pavilion’. To find something great in a very humble setting, something surprising that you never expected to be there. It is my strong belief that you don’t need masses of money to make a good project.”

“We wanted to inspire people who feel disheartened about the possibilities for contemporary art in the North”

On being a Londoner who is running a festival about the arts outside of London:

“The idea is not to come up from London and tell everyone in the North how to do it. This year is not about saying: ‘This a defining show for the whole of the North of England’ — not at all. It is just about trying to draw together as many people as possible to show off some of the strengths across the whole of the contemporary arts scene.”

On inspiring artists who live in Warrington to be more ambitious:

“Above all else, we wanted to inspire people who feel disheartened about the possibilities for contemporary art in the North, particularly in Warrington. From our research, many local artists don’t feel that like they can get a career and move forward.

Take [NORTH’s other focus exhibition] Business As Usual, for example: over 100 artists submitting works the size of a business card, realised by a young artist called Perce Jerrom with almost no budget at all… Hopefully something to inspire people who don’t feel as if they have the necessary resources.”

Business As Usual for example: over 100 artists submitting works the size of a business card, realised by a young artist called Perce Jerrom

On the preconceptions of the ‘Northern artist’:

“It’s become apparent during the making of this festival that my gut feeling was right – that there’s still a sense, for some, of feeling slightly ashamed of, or hiding ‘Northern-ness’ outside the North of England… I realised as I grew up that members of my family who had moved South had consciously dropped their accents… It’s been interesting for me to talk to so many artists and arts professionals across the North and it is great to see people starting to really ‘own their roots’ — take Ryan Gander for example: Cheshire-born, Manchester-educated, and now proudly giving back as a supporter of Castlefield [Gallery, Manchester].”

On framing NORTH’s main focus exhibition, The Dream of Modern Living?, on Ikea, who opened their first UK store in Warrington in 1987:

“People would go, drop their kids in the crèche, get a coffee, and look at some ‘crazy’ foreign design, then leave via the giftshop. That would be the family day out. And if you think of it as a model, although the stuff is for sale, the presentation and the way things are organised at Ikea is not so different to a public museum or institution.

“We asked them what they thought of when they thought of Warrington. It was amazing how many people talked about Ikea”

“I wanted something that would engage local people, so we asked them what they thought of when they thought of Warrington. It was amazing how many people talked about Ikea. Paul Carey-Kent [The Dream of Modern Living? curator and art critic]… and I thought this would be the perfect way to try to engage people who may not go to a contemporary art exhibition otherwise.”

On his ‘day job’ running commercial gallery Copperfield, based near Tate Modern and Jerwood (London):

“For the most part, I would describe the gallery as a commercially funded public gallery. For example, one of our recent exhibitions examined contemporary artists’ use of law. This was hardly a commercially-driven show in itself, but additionally we had a round table discussion with leading artists and academics that was free to attend and totally packed.

Joe Scanlan, DIY, 2003 Ikea parts, offset ink on paper, fresh flowers arrangement variable Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

“I like public programming and I do my job running Copperfield principally for the love of curating exhibitions. However, wherever possible I prefer to be generating my own revenue streams to ensure longevity and to avoid stakeholders and sponsors being in a position to negatively impact exhibitions with their own agendas. It is important where ever possible to have the option to say no to things when they just aren’t right.”

On whether the artwork in NORTH will be for sale:

“Venice is, theoretically, a non-commercial biennale of non-commercial presentations; yet it is heavily market-led, and people clearly make sales off the back of it quite directly… [In NORTH] I don’t care whether work sells or not… At the same time, I have no intention of preventing artists and organisations from making private sales; I understand for many it is a necessary lifeline that sustains their work.

“I want to get collectors involved, because they’re part of the picture”

“I will be trying to bring in collectors from the North as well as some from London and the South of England. I want to get collectors involved, because they’re part of the picture and, like Manchester Contemporary, I think they are part of the future for the North.”

On attracting international audiences, no matter where you’re from:

“Much of Copperfield’s market is international, in part due to the rise of art fairs and the increasing globalisation of contemporary art. I recently did Art Brussels with Nat from Division of Labour, and its great to see him doing so much around the world from his base outside London, in Worcester. I think that galleries in the North can be quite powerful within the fairs scene simply because they can offer something different, something new.”

On the main message out of NORTH:

“It would be naïve not to look outside one’s own bubble in any situation… locally at least the festival is trying to say: ‘Look, if you want to you can do anything, anywhere; it’s just a matter of how big you want to dream and how hard you want to work.’”

Laura Robertson

North Contemporary launches Friday 2 October 2015 and runs until Saturday 31 October 2015. See here for full exhibition, pavilion and talks information — free entry

North is run in partnership with Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival 2015, which will include performance, music, theatre, exhibitions and events – including the Art and Photography Opens. See it Friday 2 October to Saturday 31 October 2015 — free entry

Images, from top: Ryan Gander, Samsons Push or Compositie. Photo courtesy Ken Adlard; Will Lunn at Copperfield Gallery, London; Business As Usual exhibition, North: curated by Perce Jerrom; Joe Scanlan, DIY (2003) Ikea parts, offset ink on paper, fresh flowers arrangement variable, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands 

Read Laura Robertson on Northern art and soul: Warrington festival addresses north-south divide (a-n news)

Posted on 10/09/2015 by thedoublenegative