Artists: Roy Claire Potter, Aliyah Hussain, Dale Holmes, Kiya Major, John Powell Jones, John Newton, Lucy Atherton, Tom Crompton.
CRAG 2 is the result of a conversation about place, Todmorden. About the way generations of artists slip into orbit around the Calder Valley towns, and the kind of resonances that form over time.
The several artists that show work together at CRAG 2 are a loose association, drawn to the experimental and the energies that emerge when different practices sit side-by-side. The work they present is expansive, stretching across painting, writing, poetry, audio, textiles, digital, ceramic, performance, music.
This range carries a blend of the comic, the visceral and a sense of the edge, where things break down, revert and recombine. Paint, video games, voices, soft sculptures, language, rituals, tufted rugs, things fashioned in clay and bodies in shelters listening. The work on show is not a response to the original CRAG. It’s an incidental association that feels suddenly present, and keenly appropriate to the moment we are in.
Where did CRAG come from?
Whilst teaching at Huddersfield University and searching through a plan chest for collage material for his students, Dale Holmes discovered an old black and white poster from the 1980s. It was an exhibition by CRAG (Calder Rural Art Group). Seven unidentified figures positioned on the Bridestones above Todmorden. The landscape instantly recognisable but the artists indistinct, unidentified. This poster became the prompt for an experiment, a new iteration – CRAG 2. In 2024, several artists and writers orbiting Calderdale began exhibiting together as CRAG 2. The show was held in Dale and Roy’s gallery space in Todmorden. It took the form of relay exhibitions over six weeks showing the artists Lucy Atherton, Dale Holmes, John Powell-Jones, Kiya Major, John Newton and Roy Claire Potter overlapping two at a time. For CRAG2 at 9a we are welcoming artist Aliyah Hussein and poet Tom Crompton.
CRAG 2 at 9a includes other Calderdale contributions from poet Maggie O’Sullivan, writer and academic Douglas Field and features work by the late Jeff Nuttall (1933-2004) painter, poet, writer, musician, performer, teacher, publisher, sculptor, ceramicist, actor – and former resident of Todmorden.
Jeff Nuttall was a British painter, sculptor, poet, writer, performer, jazz musician, and teacher who became one of the leading figures of the UK’s 1960s counterculture. He is best known for his influential 1968 book Bomb Culture, which documented and championed the emerging underground arts scene, anti-war activism, and experimental culture of the era. Nuttall also founded the underground magazine My Own Mag, co-founded the pioneering performance group The People Show, and taught generations of artists at British art schools.
There will be a series of events, performances and talks as part of CRAG 2