LONDON.- British sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker has been announced as the first ever Annual Patron of Art UK. She is the first of a series of Annual Patrons, drawn from the art and museum world, that the charity will appoint to help promote its work as the digital platform for the UK’s publicly funded art collections.

Speaking on her appointment, Cornelia Parker said “I am hugely honoured to have been asked to be Art UK’s first Annual Patron. Their work to raise the profile of less well-known artists in UK public collections has immeasurable value. I am so happy they are now turning to sculpture and look forward to supporting them in 2018!"

It is particularly appropriate that the inaugural Patron is a sculptor as Art UK is just starting a three-year project to make the UK the first country in the world to create a free-to-access online photographic showcase of its publicly owned sculpture. Supported by a £2.8 million National Lottery grant it is cataloguing the national sculpture collection. Some 170,000 sculptures – located inside galleries, museums and public buildings and outdoors in parks, streets and squares – will be displayed on the artuk.org website for enjoyment, learning and research.

Andrew Ellis, Art UK Director, said “Having an artist as our Patron underlines the importance of our work, which includes showcasing the art of some 40,000 artists on the Art UK website. Cornelia has been a great advocate for Art UK and we are delighted she has agreed to become our first ever Annual Patron.”

This announcement comes as Art UK opens its first ever ‘real life’ exhibition at the 30th anniversary of the London Art Fair (17-21 January, London Business Design Centre) as the event’s official 2018 Museum Partner.

For Art of the Nation: Five Artists Choose the arts charity invited five leading contemporary artists - Sonia Boyce, Mat Collishaw, Haroon Mizra, Oscar Murillo and Rose Wylie - to each select 20th and 21st century works from the Art UK website based on a theme that is both personal to them and speaks to their individual interests.

The works selected come from twenty-five collections including the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock, the National Library of Wales, Manchester Art Gallery, Cornwall Council Schools Art Collection and the Royal College of Art, all shining a spotlight on the rich and diverse regional collections across the UK.

Andrew Ellis again: “When talking with artists, it is always fascinating to go beyond their own practice and explore their own tastes - to see what art piques their interest, what they admire in other artists, what they dislike. The results are often surprising. So, for our first ever exhibition we wanted to put contemporary artists at the heart of it and asked five artists to make a personal selection from the Art UK website. To tie these together into a cohesive exhibition we asked the wonderful Kathleen Soriano to be our curator. We really hope visitors to the London Art Fair enjoy the result.”

Curator Kathleen Soriano said: “Artists will always surprise and delight, and they have certainly risen to the challenge with this Art UK project for London Art Fair. Given a blank canvas, predictably, they have all headed in very different, quite wonderful directions. In doing so they have allowed us to create a highly personalised exhibition in five parts that will serve to highlight the diversity and wealth of great painting that sits in our museums and galleries across the UK.”