Highlights from Egremont

Picture credit: Paul Greenwood Photography

Tired, bruised, baffled, elated: we’re back from our weekend at Egremont Crab and Sports Fair in Cumbria.

For those who don’t know, the fair is a market, sports tournament, parade and classic car show rolled into one. Some parts of it, such as the ‘riding of the boundary on horseback’, go back to the earliest days of the fair 700 hundred years ago.

For our part, we brought artists to pose as market traders, performers to raise a few eyebrows among fairgoers, and a selection of films to show at local venues The Kings Arms and 50a Gallery.

You can also listen again to The Commentators’ phonecast from the World Gurning Championship 2011 below:

A big thank you is due to all our artists: Greta Alfaro, STK International, Stan’s Café (as The Commentators), Ellie Chaney, John O’Shea and AND residency artists Fabi Borges, Ali Khodr and Camila Mello.

They received a warm response despite the wet weather, and succeeded in adding an extra level of intrigue to a weekend already renowned for horn blowing, pipe smoking, terrier racing and (the main attraction) world championship gurning.

Well done also to all who took part in John’s Pigs Bladder Football tournament, the first football competition to use a pigs bladder since time immemorial. It was a convincing win by the locals against visitors STK International in the final, STK perhaps a little tired after their Herculean efforts to sprint, wrestle and climb their way through every competition the day had to offer.

Thanks lastly to the fair committee and the people of Egremont for allowing AND to take part in such an esteemed and ancient West Cumbrian tradition.

Onwards now to Preston!