LONDON.- Situations announced that they will become an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation (NPO), from 1 April 2015. This three-year funding agreement is a significant step for an organisation which became independent from the University of the West of England, Bristol in 2012 with the support of a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Award, and has since achieved a growing international reputation as a leader in public art commissioning.
The year ahead sees Situations bringing Theaster Gates, one of the foremost American artists of his generation and winner of the Artes Mundi prize, to Bristol to stage his first UK public project. To mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta at the site of Runnymede, Situations are producing both major public artworks in 2015 in partnership with the National Trust and are also commissioning Katie Paterson’s first permanent public artwork as part of European Green Capital Bristol 2015. Situations are also spearheading a national programme to change perceptions of public art through the publication of an international survey of public art over the past decade, accompanied by a series of talks, films interviews and workshops.
Claire Doherty, Founder/Director of Situations, commented: “Situations is a new type of arts organisation – entrepreneurial in spirit and fleet of foot, it has grown from modest roots in 2002 to become an international producing company based in a regional city, which is opening up the potential for artists to make extraordinary ideas happen outside conventional art contexts. Along with core support from visionary funders and supporters such as the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the University of the West of England, Arts Council National Portfolio funding gives us the possibility of realising our vision to inspire new ways in which public art can be imagined, produced and experienced over the next three years.”
In recent years the Situations programme has included: the staging of 24-hour international artworks across five cities in New Zealand with One Day Sculpture, 2008-9; leading an expedition to the High Arctic and declaring a new island nation with Alex Hartley’s Nowhereisland, commissioned for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad; planting a forest for an 100-year long writing project in Oslo with Katie Paterson’s Future Library, 2014-2114; and sparking a gold rush on Folkestone Harbour Beach with Michael Sailstorfer’s Folkestone Digs in summer 2014. Situations is invited to produce major public artworks in cities internationally and across the regions, and works with UK-wide organisations such as the National Trust. It is acknowledged for its original approach for commissioning public art – embodied in its New Rules of Public Art – a set of provocations which went viral on publication in 2014 across the UK and US influencing new thinking about where, when and how public art takes place.
Published this month by Art / Books, Public Art (Now): Out of Time, Out of Place is the first survey of progressive public art from around the world and is edited by Situations’ Director Claire Doherty. It charts the move from the use of landmark sculpture or spectacular outdoor event as a means of defining, embellishing and validating a place to less conventional methods used by artists over the last ten years. These approaches often involve participation from communities to question, disrupt and reaffirm a sense of place. Bringing together 40 key artworks in the public realm, this is both an essential survey of progressive public art of the last decade and an accessible introduction to one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary art.
