Ryedale Folk Museum: Rural artists paint a radical picture amid the tractors

RURAL can be radical. That's the surprising message from the Ryedale Folk Museum.

You couldn't really find a more typically rural place than the folk museum. It is a place for families to go on a day out, it has tractor displays and nestles in the heart of the North York Moors. It has also, for the past three years, become a magnet for art that is challenging and surprising.

The Ryedale Folk Museum also houses a contemporary art gallery, known simply as The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum.

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Andy Dalton took charge of the gallery in May 2007, marking his intentions from the off, with exhibitions that were unusual not only in their content, but also because of how bold they seemed in their context.

Sarah Lucas's sculpture of a gnome made out of cigarettes is an objet d'art that brings viewers up short. Sitting in the building of the Ryedale Folk Museum – albeit an annex of the building – made it seem unfathomable.

Dalton has enjoyed bringing work that makes visitors look and think twice about the venue, into The Gallery. "Since I joined we have worked on the idea that rural can be radical. Not everyone will like it and people might be challenged by it," says Dalton.

"We have a lot of artists working in rural locations, but that doesn't mean the work they are producing is traditional. It can be as radical as anything you see in any gallery anywhere."

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The latest addition to an increasingly impressive body of exhibitions at the gallery comes from Andy Black.

The artist was nominated for the Northern Art Prize last year and opens his latest exhibition at the gallery tomorrow. "We met when Andy was out walking and popped into the museum a few years ago," says Dalton.

"We started talking, he showed me some of his work and our relationship has grown." Black's drawings feature imaginary places which he creates through the repetition of a particular motif. In this exhibition the motif is trees.

Black studied at the Royal College of Art and now lives in Malton.

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He says: "My drawings use a limited and consistent number of elements – trees, in the main, sometimes with paths, clearings, mountains or the surface of the ground itself as secondary motifs.

"The drawings, which develop through small-scale studies to larger final works, navigate a territory between the constructed landscapes of Brueghel and the formal aesthetics of Ellsworth Kelly, to Capability Brown's controlled parkland."

Following a studio visit, Dalton decided to commission Black to create an exhibition for the gallery.

Thanks to Arts Council funding, he was able to not only commission paintings by Black, but also to realise his ideas in three dimensions.

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"What interested me about working with Andy were his ideas. We've found that we have to be quite careful with who we commission – if you just give a young artist a commission and tell them to produce something for the gallery, it can be quite daunting, so I'm looking for artists who already have some experience and a body of work," he says. He found it with Black. "It was the strength of his ideas that made me think we would be able to work with him. Even though he lives in this rural location and his work often features trees, it is not about anything to do with a rural landscape. His work explores the ideas of mapping and perceptions and how we live in structures and form."

Black's exhibition features his drawings, but it also features a specially commissioned sculpture – 2,000 small pine trees are arranged on a plinth designed by the artist.

"If you look at it from above, it is arranged in an oval shape, but if you look at it from straight on it looks circular," says Dalton.

"By doing that Andy has looked at how we perceive the world we are in and this subtle play on how our perception alters."

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It is the kind of work that visitors might not expect to find – but the sort of work they should get used to seeing. Black's exhibition marks the start of a period of work that could be considered more challenging – particularly for a rural folk museum.

Dalton says: "There are two other local artists, Debbie Loane and Sally Taylor, who both work with drawings, like Andy, but in very different ways."

Whichever way they work, their work is bound to be nothing if not challenging.

Andy Black – Conceptual Forest, The Gallery at Ryedale Folk Museum, tomorrow to September 19.