Inside the Wysing Arts Centre

Wysing Arts Centre in Bourn (a half an hour ride on the No.18 bus outside of Cambridge) held a harvest festival on Saturday 8th October in partnership with Grizdale Arts. The day’s itinerary included communal cooking alongside talks and resident artists also gave presentations on the history of printing presses and the Coniston Mechanics Institute. The artists also organised a Big Draw workshop for children.

In keeping with the centre’s community feel, locally grown ingredients (many brought along by participants) were prepared throughout the day for the evening’s harvest supper. It was rustic, but the food was by no means lacking in artistic forethought – the lunchtime soup was inspired by John Ruskin’s conviction that the working man should always be able to enjoy a bowl of nutritious soup. Japanese artist, Emi Uemara, could not be present to serve the soup, so we had the (surreal and distinctly odd) pleasure of eating the soup in a shack-like structure  whilst watching an eerie video she had made of herself miming preparing the soup over Ruskin’s grave.

The centre is located on a rural site, where ten separate buildings house artists’ studios, educational and media facilities, a gallery and project spaces. There is something quite startling about coming across the site which is seemingly in the middle of nowhere, even more so when you spot one of the installations – a  huge billboard that overlooks the site that reads: ‘None is in the department for passion, we are all here out of necessity. It’s the procedure. You shut up and dig!’ To the contrary, the centre is passionate in breaking the boundaries of the visual arts through their rich programme of events and projects. This season focuses on the themes of wrong answers, psychedelic studies and overlooked histories.