The YoMu Visual Arts Festival, August 3 to 10

"We're not a twinning project - our aims are primarily artistic - although we're happy to acknowledge the golden anniversary in 2007, " says Graham Martin, festival director and York artist.

"We're an innovative and unique artistled festival based around developing and showcasing professional art practice and engaging with audiences by providing opportunities to see art in new ways."

Funding has come from Arts Council England, Stadt Münster and City of York Council, which has provided the Guildhall free of charge.

The Guildhall will be the festival hub, inside which festival visitors will find studio spaces with artists making work on site, complemented by exhibitions, talks, video work and a café area.

Twenty five artists are taking part, from York, Leeds, Halifax, the United States and Münster, which will be represented by Ruppe Koselleck, Kirsten ands Peter Kaiser, Uli Grohmann, Anke Gollub and Klaus Tesching. Artists will receive expenses and money for materials and have the opportunity to participate in a show of festival work in Münster in November 2007.

The Guildhall will be open to the public most of the time during the festival to see the exhibitions and video work, attend special events and have a cup of coffee.

An associate artist hub with six York artists will be doing special events. These include Linda Foo's food performance; Jethro Bagust's new music on a bike; John Oxley's video works; Peter Baker's brick sculpture; and Simon Morris, reading as art. Milladdio will be contributing a joint portrait of the mayors of York and Münster.

"We had a wish list of artists we wanted to be involved in the festival and most of them will be involved, such as the rare chance to see Chris Brace's work, and we've also been able to add artists to the list, like Anke Gollub, " says Graham.

"Anke's paintings and drawings explore her East German background and we're very pleased to have an artist from the former East Germany as that gives the festival another dimension.

"Anke can't speak English, so she's based her festival project around learning the language, making her artwork and learning English at the same time."

Watch out, especially if you are driving, for Ruppe Koselleck's Car Trader show of a hundreds of toy Porsches, which will fill a parking space with the artist operating as a car trader, selling the vehicles to reinvest in even more cars. The venue is yet to be confirmed; the time will be 10am to 1pm.

"He's planning to take this exhibit to a Beijing car park next year, " says Graham, pictured right.

The festival director has been delighted by the support of Kirsty Halliday and John Oxley, from the city council's festival office, and of the Arts Council too.

"The councils liked the structure of the festival, and so they said 'yes' to supporting us, rather than 'no'. I always say that when you put on events like this, they're meant to happen. It's like magic, " he says.

"The premise behind the festival is that you can make a festival out of local talent and out of helping their development, by saying that the process of learning about developing and presenting your art is as important as the artwork.

"One of the features of the festival is that we're encouraging quality, not so much in terms of traditional art but in the way the artists conduct their art practice and develop their ideas. That professionalism within their practice can make such a difference."

YoMu Visial Arts Festival, York/England and Münster/Germany; today until August 10 in the Guildhall, St Helen's Square and on the streets of York. The Guildhall will be open to the public from 11am to 4pm each day, except August 10, when it closes at 1pm.

Western twists from Garry

THE ArtSpace, the progressive York gallery and workshop in Tower Street, is linking up with YoMu to present The Western World, a set of 50 cards by Leeds artist Garry Barker.

The cards are Barker's response to the "still resonant influence of the myth of the American West; a political, moral and personal reflection on the last gasp of the American Dream".

"The thinking behind Garry's work is rigorously steely - God send us more artists thus, " says gallery co-owner Greg McGee.

"With Brown cosying up to Bush at Camp David this week, artists such as Garry Barker are more pertinent than ever.

"Garry asks sinister questions and manages to provide witty answers, always underpinning his work with a wistful melodrama. His poetry, sometimes included in his work, is just as powerful as his ink and watercolours."

Introducing his Western World cards, Garry says: "The kind cruelty of the West is hidden under the black Stetsons of the bad men of Hop-a-land. George stirs in his sleep, faint echoes of the Sioux's song burrowing beneath his conscience.

"The cards of identity are shuffled again, each number a possible multiplier of other numbers, built upon that intuition of the bare two-oneness."

He notes how those cards always have the same images: the horse; the lone rider; the six shooter; the holster; the noose; the harsh landscape; sometimes snow, sometimes desert; the wildlife, of bears and wolves; the rifle; the lack of women; the ghost town and the cactus.

"These are the dreams of a Fifties childhood, " he says.

"I was born just after the war and grew up on a diet of cowboys and soldiers in a Black Country fantasyland far, far away from the killing fields. My father, a van driver, used to sing Western songs; Frankie Lane and Al Martino, Rawhide and The Man From Laramie the first two in his songbook. Zane Grey was his writer of choice, Riders Of The Purple Sage his favourite.

"At the same time I used to collect teacards. This work is an attempt to piece together these strands of influence.

"The cards were done, one each week for a year, one image, one text, as I tried to unravel the mentality of a man who sends his troops to war, who is the same generation as myself, but who grew up in the real Texas.

"This man who still uses the Wanted poster to identify his outlaws and gives his men head-hunting sets of cards to play with as they ride out to confront the terrorists; this man who is indeed a maverick."

Gallery co-owner Ails Denholm is sure that Barker's prints and drawings will make a powerful impact.

"He is very well regarded and was counted among the best in British Drawing in the Haywood Annual British Drawing Exhibition, " she says.

"He's helped up the ante for our exhibitions and adds real edgy magic to our witches' brew of artists this summer."

The ArtSpace Summer Exhibition opens today, featuring work by Garry Barker, Colin Pearsall, Peter Hope, Richard Barnes, Sally Parkin, Christine Limb, Jo Bramley, Tim Morrison and Lesley Zeeger.

Garry Barker is also showing artwork at the Guildhall during YoMu.

Musical cycle for Jethro

ART will not stand still in the YoMu festival. Instead it changes as the week progresses, bringing the visual arts to life.

Sound artist Jethro Bagust and his musical bike, Peter Baker's Moving Stack of bricks and Kate Sleight's ever-evolving sculpture of wax, cotton and string are three examples of a festival on the move.

Jethro, a 26-year-old electronic musician, is studying for a Masters in music technology at the University of York, his home city.

"A bit of installation; a bit of performance; a bit of composition; a bit of everything, " he says of his course.

After taking part in the SightSonic Festival and The Artist Returns, where he performed electronic music on modified children's toys, Jethro will be riding around York's cycle routes on his Sound Bike for two hours each day during YoMu.

This bike, souped up with electronic gizmos, a battery-operated sound system and a laptop in his rucksack, will translate the speed of the vehicle into sound, as Jethro explains.

"There are lots of intrusive noises around us and I guess this puts me on the same level as a car or a bus, but I'm not a wideboy pimp in one of those cars playing ridiculously aggressive music.

With my Sound Bike, it will be gentle persuasion to move, rather than shouting in block capitals."

For the Sound Bike project he will use the sounds of transport: trains and horses for example.

"I like the idea of sound moving without the source being obvious. People know what a horse is, they know what it sounds like, but they're not expecting to connect it with a bike, " says Jethro.

"I don't think I have a political objective. I do it because it's fun and I want to add something surprising, something surreal, to people's daily lives.

"If people don't like what I do, then I guess I'm at least raising awareness of the importance of noise in our lives and our environment. Anything I can do to raise that awareness, good, as long as people realise it's not my intention to annoy them."

Just as Jethro will be cycling around York on his "exaggerated bike ride", so plasterer Peter Baker will move his stack of bricks between four locations: firstly, from today until Sunday, St Martin's Church, Coney Street; then Monday, Tuesday, Mulberry Hall, Stonegate; Wednesday, Thursday, St Helen's Church; next Friday, Saturday, Janette Ray Bookshop, Bootham.

His aim is to "explore the city's identity in a time of transition", using individual bricks faced with objects in marble plaster.

"The brick is a sign of a positive future.

York's built environment is an indicator of past beliefs in positive futures. York, like many other cities, is going through a period of realignment, trying to marry its inherited past with a vision for a positive future, " Peter says.

"In the stack of bricks will be a series of bricks that I've prepared, that will make reference to the locations' historical significances and present and possible future usage."

Peter will move the stacks from site to site in a wheelbarrow and erect them himself to give him the chance to speak to passers-by.

"This is an essential part of the project, as it will invite public debate and gauge public opinion, " he says.

Art and design graduate Kate Sleight, 22, is taking a week off work to focus on her wax sculpture project at the Guildhall. After her candle-lit waxwork vessels at York Minster last year and at St Martin cum Gregory Church, in Micklegate, in the Lux event in January, this time she is taking her inspiration from German folk tales, and in particular Grimm's tale of Hansel and Gretel, for her new waxworks of woodland flowers.

"I'll be making flowers from wax, just in white - for the purity - and as people come through the week, my studio space at the Guildhall will be fuller and fuller with these flowers, " she says.

Flower building upon flower? Shades of Diana's tributes outside Kensington Palace spring to mind.

YoMu festival diary

Today until August 10: Ongoing activities - Artists in Guildhall, interventions, café, videos and exhibitions, plus other events. Check Guildhall daily for details.

Daily tour of studio area. 2.30pm to 2.50pm. 15 max. Meet at the Info desk in Guildhall.

Today: 8.30pm, Meet the artists, Slug & Lettuce, Back Swinegate.

Tomorrow: Noon to 3pm. Room 2, Guildhall. Art Talk 1. Ben Phillips on the artist in the work; Klaus Tesching on Beuys; Garry Barker on Beuys in Leeds. Followed by Q&A.

Sunday: Noon to 2pm. Room 2 Guildhall. Art Talk 2. Martell Linsdell: Research as practice and Kirsten Kaiser on public and installation art.

Monday: 10am to 3.30pm (with lunch break). Drawing the city with Jake Attree (ten max).

Tuesday: 10am to 3.30pm. Drawing the city (as above). 1pm to 2pm, Art Strike! , Exhibition Square. 8.30pm, video projection in Blake Street.

Wednesday: 11am to 3.30pm. Art talk, Guildhall. Richard Gray, Drawing Robots. 4.15pm to 6pm, Artists Newsletter seminar: Code of Practice on professional art practice; book at Guildhall at start of festival. 8.30pm, video projection in Blake Street.

Thursday: 4.15pm to 5.15pm. Art talk, Guildhall. Sonja Kielty, from Cartwright Hall, Bradford, on Dealing with Galleries. 8.30pm, video projection in Blake Street.

Friday, August 10: 8.30pm, City Screen Basement Bar, last night party.

Projections, experimental music for laptop and trumpet, live band and DJ.

Tickets from City Screen: £3 advance/£4 on door.

For further details on participating artists and events, see www.yorkfestivals.com