NEW Year and a fresh chapter for Lakeland Arts with a brilliant, boundary-pushing programme of exhibitions lined-up.

In fact, the compelling mix of prominent names and potential stars from the art world is as bold and wonderfully adventurous as some of the artworks that take pride of place.

One of the nation's most important and highly valued regional galleries, Lakeland Arts' Abbot Hall Art Gallery is central to LA's irresistible 'what's on' for 2018.

Included is the art of Grayson Perry, probably best known for his ceramics and cross-dressing.

His vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, but it's work based on his fictional character Julie Cope that the Turner Prize winner (2003) will focus on during his Abbot Hall exhibition.

Julie Cope’s Grand Tour: The Story of a Life opens at the Kendal gallery in November.

Grayson's show features The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope (2015), which illustrate the key events in Julie's journey from her birth during the Canvey Island floods of 1953 to her untimely death in a tragic accident on a Colchester street. The tapestries are shown alongside a graphic installation, and specially commissioned audio recording of The Ballad of Julie Cope, a 3,000 word narrative written and read by the artist himself that illuminates Julie’s hopes and fears as she journeys through life.

Additionally, from September 21 until February 2019, his pots, on loan from both national and regional collections, will grace the elegant rooms of Lakeland Arts' sister venue, Blackwell, The Arts and Crafts House at Bowness.

Meanwhile, Lakeland Arts has pulled off a major coup by bringing one of the world's most recognisable pieces of art to town - Claude Monet's Haystacks: Snow Effect, 1891.

On loan from the National Gallery of Scotland and on show at Abbot Hall until April 28, the haystacks in the painting stood in a field to the west of Monet's house in Giverney, France, where the French Impressionist's famous water lily gardens were situated. Monet produced more than 30 haystacks paintings at different times of the day and season, capturing the effect that the changing light had on their form.

The opening exhibition at Abbot Hall is In the Meadow also running until April 28, an exhibition of digital work by exciting emerging artist Katie Spragg. Katie combines clay with a range of processes, including animation, illustration and installation. Her digital animations are on show at Abbot Hall and to tie in, Katie's ceramic pieces will go on show at LA's Blackwell, The Arts and Crafts House at Bowness, from January 26.

Moving on to March and Patricia MacKinnon-Day's Rural Voices in Cumbria opens.

Her acclaimed work has generated a series of socially engaged gallery installations and site-specific corporate and public projects both nationally and internationally. In partnership with Lakeland Arts, Patricia has developed a new installation of film and media in collaboration with an audience of Cumbrian farm women. The project questions and seeks to understand why the farmer’s wife was, and remains, one of the most elusive figures in agrarian history whose labour on the farm has been largely unpaid and unrecorded.

Closer to home, Abbot Hall draws on its own treasures to showcase two dedicated displays featuring works by Royal Academicians, past and present in celebration of the illustrious academy’s 250th anniversary.

Running from March 1 until June 9, the first exhibition History of the Royal Academy RA250 traces the history of the Royal Academy through the gallery's collection. Hung chronologically by the date the artists were elected to the RA, the show includes works by JMW Turner, LS Lowry, John Nash, Victor Passmore and David Hockney.

Women of the Royal Academy RA250 follows on from May 11 until July 28, and dedicated to female Royal Academicians again featured in the gallery's collection, and celebrates a century since the Representation of the People Act 1918, which allowed women to vote for the first time in Britain. Highlighting gender discrimination in the art world, it includes works by Mary Fedden, Angelica Kauffman, Paula Rego, Sheila Fell and Alison Wilding.

Abbot Hall’s main summer show running from June 22 until September 29, will explore and celebrate the work of one of the most thrilling and individual British sculptors of the 20th Century - Elisabeth Frink. Never compromising on the development of her own style, Elisabeth ignored the commercial fashions throughout her career, creating works that combine the fragile nature of humanity with its power.

A collaboration with the Ingram Collection, the Fragility and Power exhibition will be the first large scale show of her work in the north west for several years and the first time Abbot Hall has dedicated a major exhibition to her, showing 25 works, including sculpture, bronzes and works on paper.

Another must-see, five star exhibition will feature the work of distinguished Scottish artist Alison Watt, in the frame from October 12, focusing on her exquisitely painted canvases.

Finally, 2018 is a landmark year for The Westmorland Gazette and from April Lakeland Arts' Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry hosts the award-winning regional newspaper's 200th anniversary exhibition.

MOLLI - located across the courtyard from Abbot Hall Art Gallery - will stage From Wordsworth to the Web: 200 years of The Westmorland Gazette.

It will include displays about the history of the newspaper, how The Westmorland Gazette has reported major news events over the years, pictures from the archives and connections with famous figures such as William Wordsworth and Alfred Wainwright.