PASW Regional Newsletter: Autumn 2001
Report on the Regional Network Meeting
PASW Regional Network Meeting, Exeter 19th April 2001
Maggie Bolt welcomed all to the meeting. She extended her thanks to Spacex Gallery for collaborating on the event. She said that the afternoon's session would question and explore issues of social space and the role of temporary art works in relation to shaping and influencing long term development and planning. She hoped that people would enjoy the presentations and participate in the discussion.
The meeting's Chair, Lee Corner, encouraged the audience to come up with a definition of 'social space'. The audience replied with many different definitions. Lee said that the meeting would be looking at temporary work / interventions in locations in which you would not necessarily expect to find them; in non arts specific spaces and questioning what sort of legacy we expect.
Tom Trevor, Artistic Co-Director of the Spacex Gallery in Exeter talked about the history of Spacex, which was established in the 70s and its current emphasis on 'off-site' projects. He said that the gallery had a greater national profile than local. He talked about the recent survey that cited Exeter as having the highest 'quality of life' in the UK but that with its relative lack of cultural diversity and seeming indifference to minority traditions, how the city could equally be seen as a bastion of the 'Little England'. The 'Home Series' programme of work which explored different cultural attitudes to 'the home' and thus to homelessness and the everyday institutions of family life set out to consider the ideal example of 'middle England' urbanism within a wider cultural context. He showed slides and talked about the following projects within this programme of work
- a transitional housing project for Kosovo by LDA Architects, built in collaboration with residents of Gabriel House (hostel for the homeless) on an area of waste-ground in the city centre.
- a garden project by Lois Weinberger from Austria exploring the idea of the 'edge of the city', in collaboration with residents from Gabriel House and the St Petrocks community (a drop-in centre for the homeless).
- The Garden of Love, a giant wicker bowl, built by artist James Ursell in a dense woodland on a farm in North Devon, named after William Blake's poem of lost innocence, and exploring ideas of the English rural idyll.
- a performance event by Sigalit Landau from Israel, based on the narrative of the fairy tale, The Little Match Stick Girl, incorporating a truck based concrete mixer, transformed into a giant silver music box, and hundreds of ice lolly effigies of the frozen match stick girl.
Somnabulin.
Artist: Sigalit Landau. Photo: Spacex Gallery
- a residency at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter by Scottish artist, Gavin Renwick which will result in an exhibition and series of interventions in the 'World Cultures' galleries in the Spring of 2001. Renwick has been working in the Canadian sub-Arctic for a number of years, most recently with the Dogrib Treaty Traditional Knowledge Project in Rae-Edzo. His work explores cultural conceptions of house and home.
Lee then invited questions from the audience before going on to welcome the next speakers, Georgia Ward, Public Art Co-ordinator for North Kensington Amenity Trust, Artist Kathrin Bohm and Architect Andreas Lang who worked on the Mobile Porch project. Georgia talked about the Trust and its objectives. She said that public art was seen by the Trust as something that could add a different dimension to its work, supporting its charitable objectives and with the artists acting as advocates for the Trust. The Public Art programme involved both temporary and permanent work; with the temporary work creating research and development opportunities for the artists commissioned to use the Trust's land as a laboratory. It was conditional, she said that the projects engaged with the local community. She described the Mobile Porch project as developing, exploring and uncovering the potential for public art work. This project had run alongside the Public Art Strategy that Georgia was writing for the Trust.
Andreas then explained where his interests lay and the idea behind the project - the creation of an object that became an independent space for artists. He talked about the process of collaborating with the artists and how the motivations of both professionals had melted together.
Kathrin went on to talk about how the residency had worked, showing slides of the object constructed and describing how it had been used by the Trust, and by artists and community groups.
Georgia concluded by saying that the project had raised the profile of the Trust in the neighbourhood as well as raising the awareness of the arts programme. It had created many links with other organisations and generated much dialogue about the use of public space.
The presentation was followed by questions from the audience. Lee thanked the speakers and then introduced Fred Manson, Director of Regeneration and Environment at the London Borough of Southwark. Fred talked about public space and how it is used and occupied by differing groups of people. He said that regeneration was about change and that artistic interventions acted as a way of helping people to understand change. Southwark, he said, had in the first phase of regeneration worked with artists on projects and in the subsequent phase aimed to consolidate and create more opportunities for arts projects, encouraging a programme of work that people could participate in. He talked about the role artists have in animating spaces and making them more social.The Borough, he said, was interested in proposals for spaces where there was no clear vision for the use of the space; where artists could offer a different view of a particular space.
After a break for tea, the meeting reconvened for the plenary session. Lee summarised the speakers' understanding of social spaces being where people meet; where there is the potential for artists and others working with them, to prepare us to take on change or to help us to articulate change; where an intangible legacy might be left; or where something that is not quantifiable exists. She then posed the questions:
- Do temporary works and/or temporary interventions have a longer term benefit, impact or effect than for the period they're there?
- And does this matter?
- Do they influence change in the minds of planners or the public?
- Do they inform future practice or policy e.g. artists practice and planners policy?
Mobile Porch Nov 2000.
Photo: Phil Sayer
The meeting entered a period of discussion that raised the following issues:
- the liberation for artist/s of being able to respond to a space with no parameters.
- the tendency for projects to be developed in marginal or deprived areas and what this means for consultation and public permission.
- and, therefore, whether an arts project arriving in an area might even signify deprivation!
- our ability to accept or understand the value of product or process.
- the role temporary work plays in enabling us to articulate change.
- whether there is a need for people to take away a legacy from work, and how the legacy of a project is dependent upon its original objectives and aims.
- the value of a site being financial, political and artistic.
- the importance (and occasional difficulty) of differentiating between community art and temporary artwork.
The meeting closed at 5 p.m. although the debate could clearly have continued for much longer! The Chair hoped that participants would continue to discuss the issues in other forums and looked forward to the next meeting. Maggie Bolt took the opportunity to introduce Jon Rowland and Andrew Cross, two of the consultantswho were working on behalf of PASW on an Architecture and Built Environment Strategy for the South West. For further information on this refer to the article in this Newsletter.
Lisa Harty, Network Co-ordinator, on behalf of PASW