Public Works (Portfolio)

Abstract

This multi-component output consists of a selection of approaches to the creation and dissemination of art in the public realm. These works were realised across a six-year period (December 2014 to August 2020) and incorporate multiple forms – permanent public works (‘Alight’, Cardiff, and ‘Wassail’, London), public performance (‘God So Loves Decay’, Luton and L.A.), and site-specific graphic works (‘Even in Exile’, album cover, ‘The Murenger and Other Stories’, book cover). This diverse approach to ideas of site and the public realm reflects my research interests in an artwork’s capacity to exist autonomously and coherently outside of any additional framework for its designation as an artwork. From a practice-based research perspective, a key thing these projects were all examining was: How the artwork draws on and manipulates the physical surroundings in which it is sited in order to intensify the viewer experience and extend its dialogues beyond that of simply being considered an artwork. The key methodology was in the creation and the dissemination of the works and artistic objects themselves – through this physical process a space was created in which the efficacy of these things could be observed, both individually and as part of the wider project and the wider research interests identified. In submitting these works as a multi-component output, it provides a true reflection of my interest and research in to working in this way. At one end of the scale I am interested in permanent public works – how they function, their relation to architecture and people’s use of the space, their ability to engage in a wider narrative – but I am equally interested in the transient use of space or the co-option of recognisable sites and the shorthand of understanding this can create when introducing a work in to that space