Out There: Our Post-War Public Art focuses on the period 1945-85 including 1972’s City Sculpture Project, which saw artworks temporarily sited in eight cities across the UK. After attending an event featuring Sculpture Project artists Garth Evans and Liliane Lijn, a-n Writer Development Programme participant James Steventon considers the notion of ‘shelf life’ in public art.
What does it mean to be an artist and how does the romantic idea of the creative individual pursuing their passion impact on the reality of an artistic practice? At Creative Scotland’s recent Visual Arts Sector Review event in Edinburgh, Glasgow-based artist Rachel Maclean talked about this and more. Here we republish an edited extract of her provocation.
This week’s selection, chosen from listings posted by a-n members on our Events section include a festival of light in Cambridge, a symposium on the future of the high street in Cheltenham and three exhibitions exploring painting and photography.
London-based Brazilian artist Tonico Lemos Auad has his first solo exhibition for a UK public gallery at the De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex, featuring existing works and a new commission. Dany Louise finds out more.
The newly opened £1.5 million wing of the Attenborough Arts Centre creates the largest contemporary art gallery in Leicester, with a current show by Lucy and Jorge Orta that reflects the art and science theme of the centre’s curatorial programme. Fisun Guner reports.
The UTOPIA 2016 festival is a year-long celebration at Somerset House, London marking 500 years since the publication of Thomas More’s influential text. Initiator and artistic advisor Ruth Potts explains how the festival came about, and explores the relationship between its programming and More’s groundbreaking ideas.
Jerwood Visual Arts commences its 10th anniversary year with an exhibition that explores how copyright legislation impacts on the work artists make. Pippa Koszerek speaks to Common Property curator Hannah Pierce and two of the commissioned artists, Owen G. Parry and Antonio Roberts.
The founder and director of Situations Claire Doherty has been recognised in the 2016 New Year’s Honours list for her outstanding contribution to the arts in the public realm, while artist Phyllida Barlow and Henry Moore Foundation director Godfrey Worsdale also receive honours for services to the arts.
This year has seen the Bristol-based public art commissioning organisation, Situations, present one of its most ambitious and high-profile events yet with Theaster Gates’ Sanctum project. In the first of our end of year series, its director looks back on a ‘breakthrough’ year and looks forward to more support for public art that is ‘temporary and unfolding’.
For her online artwork We Need Us – currently showing at group exhibitions in Manchester and London – Julie Freeman has powered an audio-visual animation with live data from the citizen science project The Zooniverse. She explains why data and how it’s used is so important in our increasingly digital lives.
On the eve of the United Nations’ International Day of Disabled People, Unlimited’s Jo Verrent says there is still much to be done in supporting the work of disabled artists, but that this is an opportunity to commit to change.
There have been some fantastic artists’ books published this year and Sarah Bodman at UWE Bristol’s Centre for Fine Print Research has read most of them. Here she picks ten of her favourites.
This year’s engage International Conference in Glasgow focused on young people working with art and artists, with a remit to explore the gallery as a school, the importance of cross-disciplinary engagement, and the ethics of peer-led practice. But, as Moira Jeffrey reports, much of the lively and challenging discussion was wide-ranging and off script.
As the Creative Time Summit NYC takes place this weekend at the Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, Nato Thompson speaks to Pippa Koszerek about the summit, his new book Seeing Power and how art can impact social change.
In a piece originally published by The Conversation, artist and 1997 Turner Prize nominee Christine Borland, professor of art at Northumbria University, argues that the prize needs to transcend its own ‘structures of power’ and instead find a way for the art itself to be centre stage.
This year’s Arts Council England and British Council-supported No Boundaries – billed as a symposium on the role of arts and culture – took place over two days at the end of September at Watershed in Bristol and HOME, Manchester. Featuring talks and discussion from an international cast of contributors, it once again had a live link between each venue and was also live streamed. Artist Julie McCalden reports from Bristol, while arts consultant Mark Robinson presents a view from the rainy city.
This year’s Turner Prize exhibition features work by Assemble, Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel and Nicole Wermers, and is showing in Scotland for the first time in its 31-year history. Chris Sharratt reports from Glasgow.
The inaugural Plymouth Art Weekender presents work across the city by over 400 local, national and international artists. Artist and AIR Council member Steven Paige welcomes this audacious new festival and looks at how the city’s visual art ecology has developed in the five years since British Art Show 7.
The inaugural North festival of contemporary art opens in Warrington in October with a series of city pavilions and an exhibition that invites artists’ responses to Ikea. Laura Robertson speaks to some of the artists involved and the London-based gallerist behind the event.
In a piece originally published by The Conversation, Jade French – a writer for Disability Arts Online – argues that, with an exhibition from Unlimited and other initiatives, this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe is foregrounding great art rather than paying lip service to diversity.
Last year, artist and curator Emma Sumner took a research trip to India which saw her visit an extensive network of organisations at the heart of this vast country’s contemporary art scene. Here she highlights three of them and explores what can be learnt from their approach to art and funding.
The sixth edition of the Oxfordshire festival offers an alternative to traditional music festivals by placing visual art at the centre, including commissions resulting from an a-n Go and See Bursary. Jack Hutchinson reports.
As part of his 18-month Chisenhale Gallery Create Residency, artist Yuri Pattison has been looking at the world of tech start ups, hack spaces and peer-to-peer sharing. Prior to the launch of a new website and series of digital sculptures, Michaela Nettell met him to discuss transparency, data and what contemporary art can learn from the networked society.
This week’s selection features a film installation exploring queer intergenerational relationships, an exhibition charting the emergence of contemporary art in China, and a glimpse into how, for a short period during the 1950s, St Ives challenged the then contemporary art capitals of Paris and New York.
The performance, video and installation artist discusses Hercules Rough Cut, his new commission for Bloomberg SPACE which explores empire, civilisation, London and language.
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