After leaving Arts Council England in 2013 I was introduced to Joanna and Simon Riddell who owned Cheeseburn Grange, Joanna had created and restored a range of beautiful garden spaces across the historic estate and had developed the vision to create a showcase for sculpture and artists.
Joanna said: I want Cheeseburn to be about sculpture, design and artists -a place where people can meet artists and engage with them -I hope to give artists opportunities beyond commissions - to work freely with their work in the landscape and to find a new audience for their work!
I worked with Joanna to establish a charity to support the project, chaired by Simon, and I then curated an annual programme of summer open weekends, gallery spaces and the North East Emerging Artists Award over the next 7 years.
The first experimental open weekends were in autumn 2014, and 2015 marked our first full summer programme, a modest start, with works loaned from artists who I had previously worked with and an opportunity to test out different garden spaces, routes and locations. This foundation year gave us the confidence to build the programme year on year until over 70 artworks and performances would be presented annually. The highlight of the first year was a series of installations by artist David Mach RA who I had previously worked with when he created the huge brick 'Train' sculpture in Darlington in 1997. Together with gallery exhibitions by Richard and Neil Talbot and Colin Rose.
