The Luck of Edenhall - contemporary art in Carlisle

Carlisle’s Old Fire Station Arts Centre is set to host a landmark exhibition of Contemporary Fine Art.
“The Luck of Edenhall” is free to attend and will be open to the public between Wednesday 19 and Wednesday 26 March, between 11am and 5pm each day.
It will celebrate innovation and excellence will include new media, film, sculpture, painting, drawing and installation. Artists have been asked to respond to the theme of light and transformation and the works will be drawn from a range of practices, from internationally recognised artists to those at the very early stages of their career.
The exhibition is the first major curation project for Carlisle based, Contemporary Fine Artist, Linda Fitzgerald. Exhibitors include:

• Internationally renowned, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, fresh from their recent success at the 5th Moscow Biennale, will showcase their multi-media installation, Safe Passage to the Promised Land. This installation, ‘combines sculptural, video and printed elements’.
• Originally from Zimbabwe, Ashleigh Beattie completed her studies in Carlisle in 2009, and is now based in South African. Her thought-provoking, object-based work was recently shown at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, in Harare, in the group show, The Meeting Point (2010). Ashleigh will exhibit an installation of small paper houses, constructed from the Zimbabwean Times newspaper and adorned with gold leaf.
• Still based in his native county, Derek Eland has enjoyed international renown with his recent important work, The Helmand Project (2011) documenting the experiences of frontline soldiers in Afghanistan. This innovative work has been shown extensively, most notably at The Imperial War Museum, North, in Manchester, in 2011, and will now feature as a solo exhibition at MIMA in the autumn of 2014. For The Luck of Edenhall, Eland creates new work in the form of a sculptural installation concerning the monitoring and conservation of bees.

Other artists taking part in the exhibition are: Adam Battle; Ashleigh Beattie; Sarah Le Brocq; Adam Fine; Linda Fitzgerald; Genevieve Kay-Gourley, Kat Mercer; Jane Topping and Richard Wainman.
Linda Fitzgerald said: “This show is firmly rooted in Carlisle and Cumbria. All of the artists have been educated at or have professional links to the Fine Art course at the University of Cumbria, and as such, exist as a community, a strong cultural force within the city. However, the international reach of many of the artists and the work demonstrates the power of the creative industry to forge worldwide links potentially placing the culture in this city on an international stage.”
The new Carlisle arts centre has opened its doors to the public and is offering up a pilot programme of exhibitions, workshops and other creative activities. Based at the Old Fire Station on Warwick Street, the Carlisle City Council facility is due to go through a major refurbishment this summer but in the meantime is the temporary location for local arts groups and artists.