because what you see in public space influences your thinking and how we learn and know our culture. Idividual voices and 'other' voices are not generally heard or seen in this space. but it is important to involve local people in expressing themselves in public space. It helps peole learn about other realities and histories.
Art can be a very powerful medium when used in public space. because it doesn't belong. It stands out. Particularly handmade art, stands out against our increasingly ordered and digitally/technically generated environment.
Lawrence Weiner points out that the essential thing art does is that it poses a question. The question is posed simply by its being there in the first place, but it can also pose other questions. It doesnt tell you something, it asks something.
'Art is one of those things that has no central definition, it has a history and it has no qualifications. It has no need of a reference point to anything else. Art is one of those things that appears in the world because somebody decides they're gonna pose the question and that makes it art.'
Lawrence Weiner, the means to answer questions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscU8wKzbbE
This takes a great leap from the usual rationales about art in public and for making permanent public art.
What Laurence Weiner says is that art often arrives when someone wonders what would happen if I did this?
I think my original question started with , why can't we have more art in public space with ordinary people making the artwork? and then it might be followed by the question, "why is it so important?"
now i could attempt to answer these questions in writing or I could attempt to ask the questions using public space.
What Weiner is suggesting is that if I put anything in public space, i will be asking a question.
It does parallel my line of thinking. I think that if I make a particular artwork in public space, then people will ask why is it there, who made it? why did they take the trouble. many questions are generated.
Actually placing the (obstacle - the artwork) into public space then creates a dialogue in the form of questions about why it is there.
Owen kelly suggests that the original community art movement raised questions, 'questions about the role of art in society, and the relationship between cultural and political struggle.'
kelly ( 1984,p14)
And so again we have the asking of questions.
WHY PUBLIC SPACE?
I find public space is a challenge and it is very interesting. Art in public space is undergoing a tremendous period of flux at the moment.
I also have a real discontent with the gallery system, from my position as an artist. I went to art school and learnt via osmosis that you need to develop a cv of gallery exhibitions and other thiings and then you can be taken seriously. But after sitting a few shows you come to realise that no-one attends galleries anymore. The openings are full of peers, artists and their mates. Its hard to sell art, even good art, you've got to make it big to get anywhere. Its a ratrace that will only ever allow a few at the top and the few at the top may not be the best ones. But they will be the ones that resonated with people and curators and collectors.
Though i am discontented I still play the game because I get invited tobe in shows and sometimes I want to show th work I have made. most artist's make their work with the intent of showing it to someone, it is about communicating.
Since I cannot sell my work very often, I give away a lot of it, because otherwise my house would fill up with art. if you go one more step to the left, you can give it away to a stranger. When you put your art in public space you are giving it away but you are also getting a wider audience, which leads tothe other reason that i am interestd in art in public space.
There is definitely a gap now, between much of the community and art. I have some freinds who aren't interested in coming to an art exhibition, it is a strange phenomena to them. The only artowrks they would have in their loungerooms are the works of their children. we lilve in a society where prints of artworks and other decorative imagery have taken over the walls. A gallery audience is a very specific audience, usually primed and educated with a bent towards original art, but when you put art in public space you place it in front of this other audience. You get a bigger audience and they are a broad audience.
Love or hate Banksy, he placed his art in front of the wider audience and had a remarkable impact.
The tide of street art is growing and millions of dollars spent on erasing it, does not slow it down. What is interesting is that it is changing the wat that art is commisiioned in public space and more often street artists are being comissioned for festivals and large artworks. They are entering the escelons of fine art and council commissioned art. The movement is relatively new, but is so big, it is changing the way we think about public art. It can't be ignored and I think its really interesting.
Sharon Hayes who is a street performer says of her work that if she did her speech inside it would be theatre but when she does it on the street it becomes something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviC4bfSAQw)
It is the context that is chaneged but also the hierarchy. when you take art out of the gallery, it is no longer fine art, it becomes more about the relationship between the art and the audience who see it and also about where it is. It doesn't wear the context of art culture as much. it breaks down that hierarchy of art and culture.
In the Turner Contemporary debate about public art Daphne Wright suggested that her ideal definition would be that public art would be a democratised space.
'what I think public art should be in an idealised world . . . i agree that it should be creating a democratic space and within that space it should be able to facilitate debate, discussion, public art thats attacked, public art thats graffitied. So I think it should be a very fought over space that we then as facilitators, the curators, facilitate that area, that political space. And I see it as a narrative space rather than anything that makes form....'
(Art Debate: Public art, Turner Contmeporary, Margate, UK, 2014 (19.30mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCkrzHDlGo
Very interestingly she refers to narrative, perhaps because it is not hte object that ends up defining the public artwork, but the narrative that develops from the audience and the locals who live with the artwork, or the narratives that evolve from it later. This is a concern of public art, that it is a very powerful intervention in public space, it has aftermath, particularly if it is permanent. It influences the way we perceive history and ourselves.
a quote from Bourdieu,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviC4bfSAQw)
It is the context that is chaneged but also the hierarchy. when you take art out of the gallery, it is no longer fine art, it becomes more about the relationship between the art and the audience who see it and also about where it is. It doesn't wear the context of art culture as much. it breaks down that hierarchy of art and culture.
In the Turner Contemporary debate about public art Daphne Wright suggested that her ideal definition would be that public art would be a democratised space.
'what I think public art should be in an idealised world . . . i agree that it should be creating a democratic space and within that space it should be able to facilitate debate, discussion, public art thats attacked, public art thats graffitied. So I think it should be a very fought over space that we then as facilitators, the curators, facilitate that area, that political space. And I see it as a narrative space rather than anything that makes form....'
(Art Debate: Public art, Turner Contmeporary, Margate, UK, 2014 (19.30mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCkrzHDlGo
Very interestingly she refers to narrative, perhaps because it is not hte object that ends up defining the public artwork, but the narrative that develops from the audience and the locals who live with the artwork, or the narratives that evolve from it later. This is a concern of public art, that it is a very powerful intervention in public space, it has aftermath, particularly if it is permanent. It influences the way we perceive history and ourselves.
a quote from Bourdieu,
Thus for example he states at the beginning of a later work, Masculine Domination:
I have always been astonished by what might be called the paradox of doxa – the fact that the order of the world as we find it, with its one-way streets and its no-entry signs, whether literal or figurative, its obligations and its penalties, is broadly respected; that there are not more transgressions and subversions, contraventions and ‘follies’…; or, still more surprisingly, that the established order, with its relations of domination, its rights and prerogatives, privileges and injustices, ultimately perpetuates itself so easily… (2001:1).
- See more at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/bourdieu-history/#sthash.qLwtrLjC.dpuf
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