Spearheaded by Adam Sutherland, Grizedale Arts took over from the Grizedale Society in 1999 and set about bringing the sculpture programme kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Sutherland and co. felt that the Grizedale scene had gone stale, believing artists were simply repeating the same thing Richard Harris and David Nash had done twenty years earlier. Determined to rid the forest of the wooden and stone sculptures which they saw as twee, new artists were commissioned to create pieces which could be considered more avant-garde (some locals and regular visitors to the forest had other terms for the works).

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Reece Ingram's Waymarkers were rounded up, chopped apart and transformed into this Frankenstein's monster of a piece by Simon Bill, much to the understandable annoyance of Ingram, who wasn't consulted. The work was subsequently displayed in the visitor centre, as part of an exhibition entitled 'A Different Weekend'.

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As a result, a row unfolded, in which Ingram claimed the piece was essentially theft, while Bill (backed up by Sutherland) claimed the work was more akin to the sort of sampling you would find in pop music, where an artist re-purposes another's melodies. When 'Spawn of the Grizedale Beast' was later shown in London, Ingram left a sarcastic note in the visitors' book, congratulating Bill on the sculpture they had created together.