Rural International: Art Cornwall

From Art Cornwall's interactive map

I recently had the opportunity to correspond with Rupert White, an English artist and editor of artcornwall.org, an online site that offers a host of ways for folks to explore the arts scene in his home county. Mr. White's organization is very interested in thinking about the dynamics of rural art--within England, but also globally; for those reasons it was a honor to have my recent piece How The Rural Could Save Modern Art reprinted for his readers, and it was exciting to hear of a site across the Atlantic that shares so many of our values and interests. 

Here's more information on artcornwall.org, from their site description:

Art Cornwall is an online journal that was launched in Summer 2006.

It is an art journal compiled and edited in Cornwall: a county at the most South-westerly tip of England, UK.

Cornwall is unusual in being a pre-dominantly rural area with both a strong tradition of visual art, and a large number of galleries and artists.

Articles on artcornwall.org are not only confined to art and artists in Cornwall, however, and we would like to hear from individuals from around the world who have an interest in a range of relevant topics e.g. rural art, 20th Century modernism, experimental art, landscape, anti-globalisation, internet art, folk traditions...

I recommend that folks give the site a tour; it has a rich archive of features, online projects, and interviews--as well as an interactive map and a online forum. As The Art of the Rural expands, artcornwall.org provides a stellar example for us of how a site can offer a wide range of ways for an audience to engage with local, national and even international art-making.

There's so much material on therein, from local artists to conversations with noted American critics such as Lucy Lippard, that a summary here wouldn't get to the site's diverse perspectives. Instead, I'll include this interview and feature with Gareth Edwards on his Ars Poetica project. Mr. Edwards's take on the renewed place of the rural in contemporary art, as well as his spiritual and aesthetic attachment to landscape, should resonate with a number of the artists we've featured on our site: