GRASMERE.- One of the most striking pieces of art from leading French conceptualist Daniel Buren is being restaged in the Lake District this summer - the first time it has been brought to the UK.

Voile/Toile Toile/Voile involves his trademark stripes painted onto the sails of a fleet of nine small sailing boats that will take part in a regatta on Grasmere on 2nd July. Immediately after the completion of the race, the sails will be taken from the boats and hung in the Old Library at the Wordsworth Trust in the order they finished.

Voile/Toile Toile/Voile, literally translates as, and transforms "sail to canvas: canvas to sail" and is regarded as one of Buren's most thought provoking works. Originally created for a regatta on the Wannsee, Berlin, before being shown at the Berlin Academy of Arts 1975, this is the first time this important work has been brought to the UK. The project coincides with Sea Britain 2005 - this year’s celebration of Britain’s maritime heritage - and a major Buren retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Robert Woof, director of the Wordsworth Trust said, "We are delighted that Daniel Buren has agreed to restage his seminal work on Grasmere lake. It is perhaps one of the most succinct and thought provoking of Daniel Buren’s pieces. Wherever these joyful stripes appear Buren’s work seems to reflect on the contexts in which art is viewed."

After studying painting, Buren, born in 1938, began working in striped cloth, with the stripes always 8.7cm apart. From 1965 onwards he has used this method to adorn a variety of interior and exterior sites. In 1968, for example, Daniel Buren, without permission, put up 200 striped posters around Paris; in 1970, also unauthorized, he put up striped posters in 140 Metro stations. By distributing stripes to various places, he drew public attention.

Daniel Buren (b.1938) lives and works in France and is internationally recognised as one of the most important artists of the post-war generation. His work is included in most major collections and he held recent major solo exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002, and Hangzhou and Shenzhen, in China and the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2005.

The restaging of Voile/Toile Toile/Voile, on Grasmere was brought about thanks to Daniel Sturgis, whose own art exhibition Abstract Logic is currently on show at 3°W Gallery at the Wordsworth Trust

Daniel, who organised the project, was the artist in residence at the Wordsworth Trust in 2004/05.

He said the staging of this work on Grasmere lake by the Wordsworth Trust beautifully drew attention to the dialogue between the ‘romantic and the rational’.

"The work focuses attention onto the autonomy of the art object and draws attention to the specific visual and ideological characteristics of each site. It links the art work with Grasmere as well as exploring both painting and the object."

A fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Dr. Robert Woof, Daniel Sturgis and Jean-Paul Martinon accompanies this exhibition.

The event has been organised with many thanks to: Suzanne and Selman SELVI Collection, Geneva who own the work.