Innovative ideas prove right at home in stately surroundings

One of three directors of Leeds's PSL, a contemporary art space which sees work by brave new visual artists exhibited, Harker runs the venue with Diane Howse and Pippa Hale.

Given this association, Harker is incongruous to her current surroundings, the opulent and sprawling Harewood House.

She was recently appointed exhibitions curator at Harewood House, responsible for bringing in and pulling together the art exhibitions at the house.

Today the latest exhibition opens at the north Leeds venue and Harker has been pulling together the work, which is spread over four separate, but linked, exhibitions.

Fragile Stories, WrongWoods and Bricks & Mortar, Bellevue and Awesome Movement / Fantastic Motion are the four exhibitions which are spread around the house and come together under the banner of Innovation.

"While the exhibitions might seem like they are very different, Innovation is the idea that they all come together under," says Harker.

"We translated it – and allowed the artists we commission to do so – very loosely," says Harker.

"The idea is that, in a stately home, we are used to seeing a certain sort of exhibition, so when visitors get to see contemporary art in this context, it can be quite arresting."

Visitors get to see contemporary art at the venue thanks to the vision of Diane Howse. An artist and curator, she is the wife of David Lascelles, heir to the Harewood estate. She was responsible for establishing the Terrace Gallery back in 1989. It made Harewood House the first stately home in Britain to have a dedicated space for displaying contemporary art.

Harker says: "It is why we chose the umbrella of Innovation for this exhibition. It was incredibly innovative of Diane to decide to have a contemporary space within Harewood and so asking the artists to come up with something inspired by the idea of innovation was a good way, we felt to celebrate that."

In some of the exhibitions, the idea of innovation is obvious, in others the visitor may have to search a little harder. Bellevue, which is being displayed in the Below Stairs exhibition area of Harewood, is a video installation made by Northern Art Prize winner Paul Rooney.

The Liverpool-based artist was commissioned last year by the Bluecoat Gallery in his home city to make the short film Bellevue. It was shot on location at Harewood House and draws on the English writer Malcolm Lowry's time in a psychiatric ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital in 1935, which informed his novella Lunar Caustic.

Harker says: "Because we were involved with the filming, it is fantastic to bring it here. Using Harewood House as a location for this kind of film was an innovative idea and showing the film in the space where we normally have the Below Stairs exhibition is equally thrilling."

As part of the exhibition, the estate also commissioned a new work, created in response to the Terrace Gallery by Leeds-based artist collective Nous Vous, Awesome Movement / Fantastic Motion covers the whole of the gallery and includes pencil drawings, sculpture and installation.

Harker says: "The great thing was that we were able to invite them to come on site and respond to the space. The brief to the collective was as simple as saying 'we want you to come up with something around the idea of innovation' and then we left them to get on with it."

Upstairs in the stately home, the final two exhibitions of the show are on display in the main part of the house and mix in with the other exhibitions.

At first glance Fragile Stories seems typical of what might be seen in the house at any time of year. When the exhibition opens today, members of the public will be guided through the house, and the collections being displayed under Innovation will be clearly marked.

Fragile Stories draws from the ceramics already in Harewood's collections, with pieces from around the world and Marie-Antoinette's tea tray.

These seemingly fragile objects were sometimes transported half way across the world in the 18th Century and those from the Far East inspired the race among the European factories to produce genuine porcelain.

The final exhibition of the four is the most visually arresting, simply because of its location.

Artist Richard Woods and designer Sebastian Wrong collaborated for the exhibition WrongWoods and Bricks & Mortar.

Their creations – chairs, sofas and furniture, are set into a room on the state floor and the contemporary pieces sit at odds with the rooms they are surrounded by.

Harker says the designer and artist collaboration reflects another team – Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale. Adam's interiors and Chippendale's furniture were both commissioned together for the building of the house in the 1760s.

She says: "The exhibition is a great way to start off a year of celebrating the 21st anniversary of contemporary art here at Harewood."

The four Innovation exhibitions open today and run until June 13.