G.1 Interrogating “Public” in Public Art: Evaluating Efficacy, True Intentions and Meaning in Art for All?
Sat Oct 17 / 11:00 – 12:30
voice_chat expiredchairs /
- MR Barnadas, artist, independent scholar
- Lara Bullock, independent curator, contemporary art historian
Who is the public in “public art” and what does it mean to create work for and about art in the public domain?
This panel invites papers that address the problematics of art in the public sphere from the vantage point of its relationship to the publics whom it is meant to address, represent, serve, and with which it shares space. We invite artists, academics, critics, and administrators to submit papers that consider public art through the lens of critical consciousness, ethical responsibility, efficacy of representation and/or the delegatory function of public art, as well as class-consciousness and the socio-economic implications of public art. Additionally, papers might address the act of making and siting art within the public realm and public art under the aegis of egalitarianism and/or government collections or other public art collections and the complex relationship with the audience they are meant “for.”
MR Barnadas is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and researcher. She is co-founder of Collective Magpie, an art entity dedicated to extending the studio into public space by working directly with and alongside local participants to create art. Through taking public space into the studio and working between different global sites and citizens, the art produced yields hybrid objects and new cultural forms – often pointing to conflicts of the present day. MR Barnadas' projects have been presented with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; The New Children’s Museum, San Diego; Museo El Trompo, Tijuana; Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany; and Università di Venezia, Italy. She was born in Montreal to parents from Trinidad and Peru and grew up across North America. She holds a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in Painting/Art & Technology and an MFA in Visual Arts (Public Culture) University of California San Diego.
Dr. Lara Bullock is a contemporary art historian, writer, curator, and educator. She holds a B.A. from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art History, Theory, & Criticism, and a Ph.D. in Contemporary Art History, Theory, & Criticism from the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation project, Moral Vandals: Street Artists in the Service of Change, examined the ways in which global, contemporary street artists shifted their practices from vandalistic graffiti to more socially-based practices in order to effect changes within diverse communities and public spaces. As both curator and scholar, Dr. Bullock is interested in contemporary art, interdisciplinary art practices; urban collaborative art practices; performance art and theory; museology/curatorial practices; and conceptual art. She is currently Civic Art Project Manager for the City of San Diego and continues to pursue independent research projects.
G.1.1 A Game of Versus? Stakeholders, Artists, and Publics
Alexis Kinloch & tamara rae biebrich, Winnipeg Arts Council
As arm’s-length public art program administrators working under a municipal policy, we propose to discuss issues that arise when balancing the expectations of the City and other stakeholders, the intentions of artists working conceptually, and the “general publics.” Temporally, monetarily, and conceptually, each of these parties hold a different focus and concern, with the ultimate goal supposedly being the same. We propose to discuss case studies from our recent work to show how competing interests play out, including stories of government censorship of concrete poetry for fear of it being confused with a public health directive; dialogue through vandalism; the misuse of Braille as a visual element; and efforts to be intentional about new ways of engaging diverse communities and artists in an area that has historically been a white man's game. We will speak to how we write site-specific calls to contextualize artworks, convene selection committees, address concerns/alterations that inevitably arise throughout the process of fabrication and installation, gauge the success of community collaborations beyond the final artwork, try to remain constantly vigilant about the influences of stakeholders on public art projects, and how we learn from our mistakes.
G.1.2 Artist Presentation
Kim Morgan, NSCAD University
I am an artist and a professor who teaches and practises art in the public sphere in its many forms and manifestations. I have always advocated, and still do, for the efficacy of public art to reach a wider audience and to promote dialogue around important current issues. In the art world what defines “public art” has moved beyond conventions. However, there is resistance from the various “publics” involved. The ‘public’ for me is not only the audience, it also includes the institutions that purport to curate, support, promote, facilitate, install and fund these projects. In my presentation I will reveal the resistance and obstacles such institutions create by drawing on my own experiences during a recent collaborative project titled Counter-Monuments 1,2,3 - part of a series of public art installations commissioned by Uncommon/Common Art Projects in Nova Scotia.
Kim Morgan is a visual artist working in installation and multi-media. Her work explores the impact of technology on people’s perceptions of time, space, and the body, and the shifting boundaries between the private and the public. She has exhibited in galleries such as Mass MoCA (North Adams, USA), Artpace San Antonio (USA), John Michael Kohler Arts Centre (Sheboygan, USA), Cynthia Broan Gallery (New York City, USA), St. Paul's Gallery (Auckland, NZ), The Confederation Art Gallery, (PEI) and in public spaces - the Regina Transit System, the Vancouver Olympics 2010, the National Art Centre, Ottawa, and Dalhousie University, Halifax. Awards include; the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award 2012, Arts Nova Scotia Creation Grants, and a co-recipient SSHRC (Social Science Humanities and Research Council) Research and Creation Grant. Recent residencies are Artpace San Antonio Texas, The Dalhousie Medical School, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, and The Banff Centre for the Arts. Morgan is a Professor at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design University in Halifax, Canada, where she teaches sculpture, installation and public art.
G.1.3 Art Post-Public: Mediation and the New Aesthetic Normal
Matthew Jarvis, Nebraska Wesleyan University
This paper will discuss the emerging importance of social media not simply as a landing platform form for artists and their works, but as a survival mechanism in a global community where the very notion of public, especially as it presently relates to urban centers, no longer exists. By opening spaces, works, and shows globally during the covid-19 pandemic implications have been made about accessibility and need of public good will to maintain art that is often restricted by location and cost. Institutions have begun to demystify the notion of experiential relationships of viewership in order to survive and, as such, have raised the questions: Is private viewership through a mediated experience the same? Has globalizing art through democratized platforms exposed the non-need for vaunted institutions? Will art viewership return to a monied status quo or will expectations of viewership shift toward individual public media experience?
Matthew Jarvis is the art historian in the Department of Art at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Before coming to NWU he held faculty positions at Georgia College, The University of Florida, and Jacksonville State University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego under the supervision of Dr. Norman Bryson and specializes in: Modern and Contemporary Art History in addition to Film History and Theory. He was the Dean of Arts and Humanities Curatorial Fellow white at UC San Diego. Other honors are: recipient of a Russell Research Award, the Whitaker Speaker, keynote speaker at the Alabama Film Symposium, and an inductee into the Bouchet Society for his work in university diversity issues. Past curatorial efforts include: Andy Warhol: Collected Photographs and Prints; California Acts Up: Student Protests of the 1960s; Forgotten Heroes (an examination of transgender Civil War soldiers featured in The Advocate); Physiques of Arte del Fascismo Italiano; Warhol Re-visited; and American Dreams: 1950s Edition. Dr. Jarvis has written several catalogue essays and is a frequent invited speaker on a wide range of aesthetic and filmic topics. His present work is examining Lowbrow Art through tiki culture.
