Kettle's Yard is back

The area known as Kettle's Yard derived its name from the Kettle family. During the 18th century the family built a popular theatre on the site which was promptly closed by University authorities on the grounds it would corrupt the morals of the students.

'Kettle's Yard' gradually declined into one of the city's poorest areas; a place for small businesses and jobbing tradesmen. By the early 20th century, it was an overcrowded site made up of cottages, workshops, pubs and shops, and increasingly regarded as a slum. After the Second World War, and in parallel with the post-war drive in Britain for urban reconstruction, the area underwent radical change.

Only four dilapidated cottages were spared during the area's regeneration and it was in this derelict state that Jim and Helen Ede first discovered the site in 1956. The Edes worked quickly. By the end of 1957, the house was ready to receive its first visitors.

Ede did not have a vast fortune at his disposal with which to purchase art. Instead, he often acquired works by exchange or through the generosity of his artist friends. He also purchased works by artists at the early stages of their careers.

As well as the Gaudier-Brzeksa estate, which formed the backbone of the collection, the display of Ede's collection of Alfred Wallis paintings helped to establish the painter's place in the history of art. Until then, only a few individuals had recognised the quality of Wallis' work.

Andrew Nairne said: “What makes Kettle's Yard remarkable? There’s a wonderful sense that the house is more than a house, it’s a place of ideas and imagination and inspiration, it appeals to all the senses: you can hear the sounds of the cottage, you can smell the flowers and you can sit down in all the different chairs Jim Ede had in his house.

"And it’s the combination of beautiful ambience, the light, the cut flowers, and the sense that Jim really had a vision about how you might lead your life, how you might organise your own spaces, and how you might go away from Kettle's Yard and rearrange wherever you live, that inspires you to think about the world in a different way.

"It’s a place with beautiful art, beautiful furniture, a wonderful atmosphere, a place where people do seem to be constantly inspired When we think about Kettle's Yard in the future, we want to ensure that our education programme, our exhibitions and our concerts reach the widest possible audience. This would fulfil the vision of Jim Ede when he created the Kettle's Yard house; to have a living programme every year which is inspiring, imaginative and thrilling."

Added Thomas: "We really take on the philosophy of Jim who opened his doors to all and we want to continue to make sure Kettle's Yard is accessible to all, to empower young people to create their own art and to create opportunities for them to become the next curator or the next musician of the future."

Actions: an introduction by Andrew Nairne

"Every exhibition has its own story. A few years ago I came across the first monograph on the work of Naum Gabo, an artist in the Kettle’s Yard collection. It was published in 1957. It includes a fold-out facsimile of the Realistic Manifesto wall poster originally pasted up in the streets of Moscow in 1920 and a pair of Perspex spectacles for viewing stereoscopic images of Gabo’s sculptures.

The book also has a remarkable exchange of letters between Gabo and the writer and critic Herbert Read, originally published in Horizon magazine in July 1944.

Gabo’s letter addresses questions he is frequently asked, including: ‘What do my works contribute to society in general, and to our time in particular?’ In an especially moving section, he accepts that his art may be perceived as ‘irrelevant’ to the immediate needs of a world at war.

When we began discussing how we could best celebrate the opening of the new Kettle’s Yard, I remembered Gabo’s visionary letter, and in particular the following sentence: “I try to guard in my work the image of the morrow we left behind us in our memories and foregone aspirations and to remind us that the image of the world can be different.”

Borrowed for an exhibition in the 21st century, Gabo’s appeal on behalf of his own art and the artists of his time is still relevant today. The visual arts, in all its forms, have the capacity to change our view of the world and so influence how we individually and collectively act and engage with life.

Jim Ede, who created Kettle’s Yard, shared this belief in the purpose and value of art and the interaction between art and life. Ede describes meeting Gabo in his book A Way of Life (1984).

Today, through the generosity of others, Kettle’s Yard has a number of Gabo’s works in the collection. The most exceptional perhaps is Linear Construction in Space, No.1, made in St. Ives in Cornwall around the time Gabo composed his letter. This beautiful and pioneering sculpture, a harmony of space and light distilled through perspex and nylon threads, usually sits on the black Steinway piano in the Kettle’s Yard House. For Actions it will be among the first works encountered by visitors in the new galleries.

If Gabo’s vision, his ambition for what art can do, is the inspiration for the exhibition, we also knew we wanted to make an exhibition which would reflect the energising diversity of art now, include commissioned new work and continue long standing creative partnerships with our local communities.

Actions would be our headline title, a definition of art making as something with conscious purpose, though this could take a thousand different forms.

Actions goes beyond the visual arts and includes the architect of the new Kettle’s Yard, a composer, a dance company and choreographer.

The aim is to create a gathering of artistic expressions, to see what happens when a myriad of diverse voices come together. The selection is both carefully determined and we hope surprising, working with artists we know well and with others who we have only recently discovered. Of the latter, Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, was just setting out on her career, when we invited her to participate in Actions. 

Following in Jim Ede’s footsteps, Kettle’s Yard has always sought to support emerging artists. It is our privilege to be able to exhibit these deeply felt and luminous photographs for the first time in the UK.

In a television interview late in life the avant-garde Latvian theatre director and writer Asja Lācis (1891 – 1979), said “we have no right to be satisfied with anything, even if things go well. On the contrary, we have to do better. And continuously search for the new, the contemporary.”

The art in Actions offers much to aesthetically enjoy and love, but this essential strength is allied to insight about the present moment; the desire to contribute to and animate contemporary discourse, whether cultural, social, political, or economic.