To be Continued
Artists' Interventions Into the Public Realm
Description:... "To be continued> was a series of artists' commissions that created temporary interventions in public spaces in Walsall when The New Art Gallery Walsall was in the final stages of completion. More than 20 artists from the UK and abroad visited the town early in 1999 to develop projects in response to their first-hand experiences of the place. Before pursuing their own interests and leads, each artist was taken on a hard-hat tour of the Gallery under construction. Located at the end of the main shopping street between Bhs and Woolworths, the five-story building was designed by Adam Caruso and Peter St. John. On ascending through the building, the artists experienced what every visitor now sees - Walsall from a completely new perspective. Windows in every room punctuate the gallery-goer's experience, providing the first public (and free) aerial view of the high street and surrounding conurbation. This newly established relationship between the town and art, between the real and the imaginary, would become the central thread to all the commissions." "Kate Fowle offers a partial view of Walsall - the intertwining of social and political oral histories with the physical surroundings - perhaps a parallel experience to that which the participating artists encountered when they visited the town. Alan Read took a train ride to Walsall, armed with all the expectations appropriate to the occasion of seeing the nationally acclaimed building and 'house of art' for the first time. His insights into potential correlations between art and architecture, as well as the hazy distinctions between marketing hype and concrete realities, shed fresh light on the potential for a welcome disorientation through contemporary practice. In 'The New New Monuments', Will Bradley goes on to ask what it means for an artist to work on a 'public' commission when ideas of the communal and civic have all but fallen apart. Focusing on the changing relationships of commerce and community, he suggests that art as a process of dialogue, with artists as purveyors of ingenuity, is one way forward. And finally, Deborah Smith gives a brief introduction to each artist's project, to finish where everything started - with artists' ideas and responses."--BOOK JACKET.
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