THEIR Colours And Their Forms: Artists’ Responses to Wordsworth is being staged at the Wordsworth Trust following research that highlighted how the Grasmere-based trust needed to take more risks and be provocative, if it wanted William Wordsworth’s work to resonate with today’s generation.

The ethos of the exhibition is to encourage visitors to appreciate Wordsworth’s work and life in different ways. To achieve this, nine commissioned artists have drawn inspiration from some aspect of the works of William and Dorothy, to create stunning, thought-provoking and innovative pieces specifically for the exhibition.

Featured are Brian Thompson (sculpture); Tim Brennan (video); Mike Collier (painting and digital printing); David Harsent (poetry); Manny Ling (calligraphy); Robert Frachen and Sam Wiehl (AV installation); John Strachan and Tony Williams (poetry).

Each has responded to a chosen element within the works of the two Wordsworth siblings, whether a particular poem, a journal entry by Dorothy, a theme, their creative style, a line or section from a literary work or the landscape in which they both walked extensively.

The theme of walking is a creative current running throughout the exhibition, which is part of a trilogy of Wordsworth Trust shows for 2013, and includes Phoebe’s Scrapbooks: Stories of a Changing Grasmere, running on consecutive dates with Their Colours and Their Forms and Dorothy Wordsworth: Wonders of the Everyday.

The exhibition runs until March 10, daily 9.30am-5.30pm.