In March 1999, Adam Sutherland was named as the new Director of the Grizedale Society, after having been encouraged to go for the job by Peter Davies, founder of the sculpture project. He was tasked with reinventing the arts programme at Grizedale, and right from the beginning, his appointment would prove to be a controversial one. He made clear his opinion that the sculpture situation had grown 'tired', with too much reliance on locally-sourced stone and timber, going as far as to say in one interview: 'I don't really like wood'.

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Sutherland's first move was to have a billboard put up, halfway down the western side of the forest, for the purpose of displaying pictures by various artists, and for showing horror films on. 'Pay and Display''s Calum Stirling was selected to construct the billboard.

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The first artist Sutherland commissioned was Marcus Coates, who photographed himself in a bedsit, near-naked save for a set of antlers attached to his head, and called the resulting picture 'Wild Animal In His Den'. As well as this, Coates also made a video called 'Sparrow Hawk Bait', in which he tried to emphasise with the Sparrowhawk's prey by sticking dead birds to his head and running through the forest. It's easy to see why this new approach to art in the forest put some noses out of joint.

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The next picture to grace the billboard (and the only one I've got a picture of) was 'Rally Hopeful', of forester David Shuttleworth, also a keen rally driver. The picture showed Shuttleworth standing next to his car and was attributed to Anna Best (maker of 'Map'), Karen Guthrie, Nina Pope and Simon Poulter.

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After that came Jenny Brownrigg's 'Other', a picture of a forest background which matched the scenery behind, causing the billboard to blend into its environment.

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A natural board followed, draped in a brown curtain, before Graham Gussin's 'Nothing I Know, Something I Don't Know', a photograph of a pair of outstretched hands. For pictures of all of the different billboard images, head to Amelia Harvey's page: www.grizedaleforestsculpturepark.wordpress.com/farra-grain-bilboard/

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All of this had caused consternation, and in an interview with Rupert White for artcornwall.org, Adam Sutherland remarked that "the Forestry Commission realised pretty soon that I had gone too far in what they wanted."

 

But if his paymasters were concerned, the locals were furious. He recalled in an interview with arts curator Paul O'Neill:

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"We got a phenomenal stream of complaints, fury actually, from an old-school audience, mainly from Middle England, it was quite exciting to think that this all meant something, people were interested.

At the end of the first year, the Forestry Commission said don't do any more sculpture in the forest, don't do any more contentious objects because they just couldn't cope with these letters of complaint.

Some of the more extreme ones were kind of, just saw it as some sort of dictatorship, I was accused of Stalinesque purges and things like this, bizarre."

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When Grizedale Arts went to the local village to suggest an co-operative event involving the billboard to mark the Queen's Jubilee in 2002, the good folk of Satterthwaite politely stated that they would like to burn it. On the evening of the fourth of June, Adam Sutherland delivered a speech and handed a lit torch to a member of the assembled crowd, who the did the honours and set fire to the billboard. Colin Lowe and Roddy Thomson designed the final display specially for the burning, which featured deliberately provocative statements such as:

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"Parishioners: understand the recent pestilence and disease as a harbinger of the fragility that should undermine your arrogance. A Hex on site-specific sculptures: that curdle the air and writhe on mediocrity's gibbet. Hominoids: rise up and moan about what you don't understand with psychotic indifference."

 

It's hard to know what to make of the whole 'Forest Billboard' project. Sutherland and his contemporaries perhaps fall into the trap of believing that all art should be in some way challenging, and although it is good to pose difficult questions, is it not enough for art to sometimes make you smile, or to simply appreciate your surroundings? My love of the older sculptures probably means I'm too biased to comment, but either way, the billboard's aim was to challenge people's perception of what outdoor sculpture can be, and in that, for better or for worse, it was successful.