Art for the Public

Barnie Page

In the commissioning of public art, there is a tendency to view the art as "the cherry on the cake" which sadly it often it is: a sweet, pretty, finishing touch that is less than a mouthful and by no means integral to the rest of the cake; at best it complements the cake and at worst it is an attempt to conceal a bad cake. The cherry is commonly known as plop art.1 A successful work of public art is not the cherry but a vital ingredient in the recipe for the cake itself; an ingredient that must be added to the mix early on, before baking, to be bound together with the other ingredients.

Pic

Koro's Cat's Journal, courtesy Ryan Gander

I have worked for Ryan Gander for almost three years now, and in my current position for one year. My job title at Ryan's studio is "Projects Co-ordinator": when Ryan is commissioned to produce a work or invited to submit a proposal to a selection committee, I co-ordinate it. From being the point of contact for all parties, to assisting Ryan's research, to making scale-models of proposed sculptures, I manage the projects. During my time working for Ryan I have seen him approached more and more frequently for commissions and public works, and at some point I somehow began managing them. Along the way I have picked up some new and unexpected knowledge and skills, mainly thanks to the sheer diversity of Ryan's practice but also in part to the nature of working on a larger scale and with larger budgets.

Along the way I have also picked up an interest in public art. Before I started this job I had never paid very much attention to public art, perhaps even turned a blind eye to it. It always seemed to me that commissioners approached it as the aforementioned cherry and that artists used it as an excuse to make a big version of an existing work or a grandiose, signature-style, egotistical gesture. My impression of public art could have been summed up by the lifeless and seemingly irrelevant pieces at which Mark Leckey desperately chants in his shamanic video-compilation March of the Big White Barbarians. The best use of public art I had ever seen was that of the sculptures used as skate ramps in Raphael Zarka's photographic series Riding Modern Art.

Ryan's practice does allow for a conceptual layering, which means that a rejected proposal is not always completely dead and buried forever.

When Ryan makes a proposal for a commission he approaches it as site specific, by which I mean he conceives of a brand new work in response to the site and the context. He doesn't have a library of pre-packaged proposals and prefabricated maquettes that are just waiting to be blown up and put in any park or office foyer. This way of working produces proposals for adventurous works that are engrained in a particular location and community, and unfortunately it is their adventurousness that in some cases can be held accountable for their failure to be selected.

The only bad thing about my job is that I don't always get to see all of the best ideas come to fruition: it's a very sad thing when, having invested a lot of time, effort, heart and soul, a proposal is rejected. Its site-specificity often means that a rejected work could never be realised in any other location, even if the occasion arose. From this point of view the production of a proposal is a huge investment, for any artist, which may or may not have any return. However, Ryan's practice does allow for a conceptual layering, which means that a rejected proposal is not always completely dead and buried forever.

KORO's cat
Pic

Primary Carer's pin-badge, courtesy Ryan Gander

In 2012 Ryan was invited to make a proposal for an art commission at a new university in Norway. He proposed The Koro's2 Cat Scholarship for Caring Students. A Norwegian Forest Cat3would be purchased and given to the university, it would have free reign of the campus and live in a purpose-built, electric-heated house in the courtyard where it would also be fed. An annual scholarship would be awarded to a student experiencing difficult financial circumstances, during which period they would take on the role of Primary Carer for the cat and receive non-repayable financial support, for a maximum of two years. The Primary Carer would be required to wear the official Koro's Cat's Primary Carer enamel pin-badge (image) at all times when on the university campus. A yearly, one day celebration for the cat would take place, Koro's Cat's Day, on which day the cat would be presented with a fillet of prime poached salmon and photographed in the arms of the current Primary Carer. The photograph would be printed, framed, and hung on the wall of the university foyer. The Primary Carer would also be required to maintain Koro's Cat's Journal, a scrapbook-come-diary, with both drawn and written observations of the cat, accounts of any notable events in the cat's life, any Koro's Cat related ephemera, and to write about their personal experience with the cat and the project. The Koro's Cat's Journal would remain in the university library at all times. The work would not only provide financial support for a student in need, but would also introduce an element of unexpected domesticity into the institution. On top of this it also comprised of sculptural elements: the cat's house, the pin-badge, the journal and the annual photographs. It ticked all the boxes, but sadly was not selected.

Since then, a new sculptural work has developed from the rejected proposal, The Investment - A student scholarship based on the care of a Norwegian Forest Cat for Koro (2013). The work takes its name and form from a stage in the process of bronze casting called "investment". Investment is the stage at which a wax master model is dipped in layer after layer of ceramic slurry and then fired in order to harden the ceramic and melt the wax out of the mould. The molten bronze is then poured into the cavity, and, once set, the ceramic is cracked and chipped away to reveal the almost finished sculpture. The use of the word "investment" for this process is defined as "an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result".4 Expectation is key; whilst one can expect a worthwhile result, there is no certainty that the mould will be perfect and there is no way to tell until the bronze has been cast. The Investment - A student scholarship based on the care of a Norwegian Forest Cat for Koro is one in a series of Ryan's Investment works, which each take the form of a group of ceramic investment moulds of ephemera relating to various rejected public art proposals, never to be cast in bronze.

The cherry

All too often public art is a developer's afterthought: an artist is commissioned at the last minute to plop down an awkward shiny plop right in the middle. The artist will be asked to produce a monolith that looks like art and somehow encapsulates the ethos of the brand new (currently uninhabited) suburb, mall or complex, whilst also paying respect to the history of the land as well as the utopian future envisioned by the planners (as depicted on their site hoarding). Public consultation is meaningless because the public wasn't consulted about the development in the first place. The artist becomes an industrial designer, working to a strict brief and a tight deadline to produce what becomes a utility, as soulless as the polished steel and glass buildings surrounding it. But it is sold to the public as a glistening, one-off, site-specific, monument to multiple discordant histories and a debatable future, by a world-renowned artist who was selected from a competition shortlist by a panel of ten important locals and one or two art experts.

The format of "competition-commissioning" is much to blame for the prevalence of plop art. "Competition-commissioning" is the reserve of the indecisive commissioner who is unable to confidently select an artist based only on a portfolio of existing works and who does not have complete trust of their art advisor. So they write a brief and invite a shortlist of artists (usually between 2 and 6) to each produce a proposal for a site-specific work, which will include several visualisations, a feasibility study, a budget breakdown, a production schedule and a maquette, all on a tight deadline. Material and travel expenses are reimbursed up to £2,000. An X-Factor-esque selection process now takes place: the artists present their proposal to the selection committee, submit their documents and maquettes, and await their verdict. The rejected artists are left with stillborn artwork, unable to ever be produced due to its site and context-specificity. Now that the winning artist has been selected, they must make their proposed work according to their proposal, which had been produced with little input from the commissioner, let alone end-users.

To treat public art as a vital ingredient means to consider it early in a project, like sugar in a cake mix

To treat public art as a vital ingredient means to consider it early in a project, like sugar in a cake mix. By allowing conversations between artists, architects, landscape architects, locals, end-users and commissioners before final decisions have been made, ideas can evolve and an artwork can take a much broader, even social form, and not necessarily a sculpture like what has come to be expected of public art.

This is not to say that plop art is worthless, as it certainly can become a beloved part of a community as well as being of cash value to its official owners. In 2012, in the midst of the British coalition government's harsh austerity measures, there was uproar when Tower Hamlets council in London planned to sell their Henry Moore sculpture, Draped Seated Woman, for £20 million. The sculpture hadn't been in London since it was vandalised in 1994 and the council argued that it "brought no tangible benefit to the Tower Hamlets community",5 nevertheless it belonged to the people and they loved it. Similarly, in June this year Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway sold their Barbara Hepworth sculpture, Figure for Landscape (1960), for £4,170,500. The work had stood outside the museum since 1968 and it was an extremely controversial decision to sell it, yet without the sale the Norwegian institution would have struggled to stay open due to a lack of funding. Locals argued against the sale because they loved the sculpture and they believed that the sale was only beneficial on the short-term. Kunsthall Stavanger supporters responded:

Does one want an exhibition space that actively and innovatively disseminates art to a growing audience? Or does one want a sculpture in front of an empty building? The choice should be obvious.6

Pic

The Investment - A student scholarship based on the care of a Norwegian Forest Cat for Koro, 2013, courtesy Ryan Gander

Artists in the second half of the 20th century proved that a work of art did not have to be bound to a single, physical, visible object, so why does public art so frequently appear as one? What if the work of public art consisted of an annual award for youth theatre groups to put on a performance in a newly landscaped space in their local park, where the work of art is in fact the social impact of the redistribution of wealth? It is certainly possible for public art to be less tangible whilst being more effective. The lack of a single physical form also give an artwork the potential to be interpreted more variously, more personally, for it to be experienced differently by every person, on every encounter, for it to be adaptable and thereby increase its longevity and its relevance. It would no longer be necessary, or even possible, for an authority to sell it off. Recent brave commissioning has shown how a public artwork can be an investment for and in its public; this is the difference between "public art" and "art for the public". Art for the public is an even greater investment for both its commissioners and its public: while more time and effort may be required to initiate such a work, the return tends to be much more rewarding in the long-term.


1 Enigmatic, UFO-like structures that rarely bear clear relevance to their surroundings

2 Public Art Norway, www.koro.no 

3 The Norwegian Forest Cat, or Norsk Skogkatt, is a breed of domestic cat native to Northern Europe, and adapted to very cold climates. It is strongly built and larger than an average domestic cat. The breed has a long, sturdy body, long legs, and a bushy tail. The coat consists of a long, glossy, thick and water-repellent top layer and a woolly undercoat and is thickest at the legs, chest and head. Also known to be hypoallergenic.

4 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/investment

5 http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/outrage-as-tower-hamlets-votes-to-sell-20m-henry-moore-sculpture-8297200.html?COLL- CC=967952158&.

6 http://news.artnet.com/art-world/fight-rages-in-norway-over-sale-of-barbara-hepworth-sculpture-46334.

 

Kunstjournalen B-post #1_15: Battle & Consensus