Via Citypollen, a video of Mircea Cantor’s Monument for the end of the world, which the blogger came across as part of Modern Art Oxford’s Transmission Interrupted (which continues until June 21.) And for her it raises an interesting questions. Why are public spaces dominated by thoughts of the past, …
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Public Art
Public art: Jaume Pensa’s big Dream
Michaela Crimmin: “I have just been to the launch of the extraordinary – the wonderful – new work by Jaume Plensa outside Runcorn in Cheshire, part of Channel 4’s Big Art Project.This has been commissioned by a group of ex-miners wanting to commemorate the heritage of their previous industry; but with a positive rather than a nostalgic take. The artist and the miners worked with curator Laurie Peake and you could visibly see art expert, artist and local people thoroughly enjoying joining together to create something marvellous. “
For news of a panel debate here at the RSA around topics raised by this public commissioning initiative, featuring Grayson Perry, Munira Mirza, Andrew Shoben and Jonathan Jones, and hosted by Jon Snow see the main Arts & Ecology site.
Photo of Dream by Jaume Plensa courtesy of Channel 4
Clay and the Collective Body
{IHME Project 2009: Antony Gormley, Clay and the Collective Body. Ninth day of the clay work. Photo: Kai Widell.}Antony Gormley has turned an indoor sports arena in Finland into a giant collective artwork. Starting with a massive cube of raw clay, the exhibition is now on display after 10 days of sculpture making by the general public.
This has been done before (i.e., Damián Ortega’s Clay Mountain), but the scale and level of interactivity makes this really interesting. Plus, is it still winter in Finland? Anyway, probably pretty nice to be inside a sports arena, turning clay into a whimsical fantasy land of public art.
Be sure to check out the day-by-day photo diary at ihmeproductions.fi. Here’s how it all started:
Here’s a bit more info about the project, if you are curious:
Clay and the Collective Body will feature a huge clay cube that will be both a challenge and a shared bodily experience. Designed specifically for Helsinki and realised for the first time here, Gormley’s work brings together Mass, Space and Energy in a response to the aims of the Pro Arte Foundation Finland: to ask questions about who make art, how art can be made and who it can be for.
The Clay and the Collective Body project will start with a clay cube the size of a small house (4 x 4 x 4 m) and weighing 100,000 kilograms, housed in a well-lit, humidified pneumatic building. In the first phase of the project (from 22 to 24 March), the public will be able to view the constructed cube. In the second phase (from 25 March to 3 April), the public will have an opportunity to work on and with the clay and to use it to make objects of any kind, big or small, alone or with others.
The Fourth Plinth: a call to artists
This is my blatant call to artists to use the Fourth Plinth – particularly with respect to bringing fresh ways of exploring social issues in what you could argue is the country’s most central space of debate – Trafalgar Square. I’m not at all sure I want to see myself as the Linda Snell of the RSA but I have a similar yearning for public performance and spectacle – but by artists!
Go to www.oneandother.co.uk and press the “Register your interest†button.
It’s interesting to see that Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project is rapidly becoming a lobbying prospect. The idea of using the plinth as a site for contemporary art was initiated by the RSA , no mean feat as it turned out and we learned a lot about the complexity and the ambiguities of the word “public†with respect to both public space and public art.
William Shaw will shortly be interviewing Bob & Roberta Smith for the website. His idea for the Plinth was shown at the National Gallery last year – very much referencing environmental issues, as does his current work at TATE’s Altermodern exhibition. I went round this yesterday. Bob is having a weekly conversation with the show’s curator Nicholas Bourriard and then makes a new work replacing the previous week’s piece. This latest work addresses climate change and as ever his work debunks – it puts the public into art with no affectation and no patronising – with a directness that is exhilarating.
The problems of political public art
Few pieces of public art gather as much attention as Laith al-Amari’s recent sculpture of a shoe, created with the help of local children to celebrate Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s Bush-ward footware-hurling incident. Its public life has been shortlived, however. Tikrit police have insisted it be removed from its public location because of its “political” nature.
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