Field Art Projects

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Field Art Projects

Field Art Projects commission artists to make works that inspire, challenge and entertain.

We believe that art and design can play an invaluable role in enhancing our enjoyment of the urban and rural environment. We have a decade of experience commissioning projects from the large-scale to the intimate resulting in permanent or temporary projects to transform the ordinary and the everyday.

10/04/2024

In case you hadn’t already realised, in its transformed & complete form is now open to the public, which means that my artists commissions within the space are now on full public view!

tile installation ‘The Reticence Of Warehouses & The Opulence Of Banks. An Interior After The Byzantine-Influenced Italian Gothic Manner Of The Bristol Byzantine’ draws on the Bristol Byzantine movement of which the Lantern building is a prime example, the work integrates vibrant & authentically crafted materials, produced by handmade tilers , into the renovated original architecture.

bespoke textiles for the main auditoriums ‘No. 1226, No.1218 & No. 1219’ were created with Bristol-based fabric designers Dash & Miller who assisted in translating her work into the design of fabrics that accommodate double layered patterns, which shift & move depending on your position in the space.

Sound Artwork ‘Undercurrents’ takes the form of a sonic poem developed in workshops with black artists, writers & historians connected to Bristol, which considers the darker parts of the venues history as well as its position on the water, & re-contextualises it in resonance with African diasporic experiences & Afrofuturism.

sculptural intervention ‘Motion Efficiency Study’ is a contemporary response to the neo classical façade of the building. Developed through a period of research looking at both the architecture & key Moments from the venues history including when Elsie Howey hid in the venue’s organ to shout “Votes for Women” in 1909, & the performers who waited outside a 2nd story external door to come onto stage.

Louise Mitchell, CEO of Bristol Beacon sums it up well here - “Our public art programme will help us ensure we make the most of and celebrate this special space, reflecting the history whilst also looking forward to the future. The four artists that were selected have proposed exciting works that are sympathetic to their surroundings, & will help to create an uplifting & joyful space that enhances the music & welcomes people in.”

For more details please go to the Field Art Projects website at www.fieldartprojects.com

26/10/2023

Last, but definitely not least, Linda Brothwell is the fourth artist who I’ve been working with on a series of commissioned artworks, which will pay an integral role in spaces within the refurbished & relaunched Bristol Beacon.

Linda is an established visual artist, lecturer at the Royal College of Art and a Churchill Fellow based at Spike Island in Bristol, where she also lives. She trained in goldsmithing, silversmithing, metalwork and jewellery, and is interested in heritage, place-making and how people look after their surroundings. Her multi-disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions.

Her series of works “Acts of Care”, in which she replaces missing letters within signage on iconic buildings, initiated a repair movement and earned major recognition through international gallery support & the Jerwood Makers Open exhibition in 2013. Other works by Linda are housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art collection, and she has exhibited in the UK and internationally for the British Council, Design Museum , National University of Cultural Heritage and for the Crafts Council arts fair ‘Collect’.

Linda’s work for Bristol Beacon will be her first permanent public artwork in the UK, which she has said is “particularly meaningful to me that it will be in the city in which I’ve lived and worked for almost a decade”

“I wanted to look at the history of the building, what’s happened around it and on this street during its history and use that narrative to create an elegant and joyful solution on a scale appropriate to the building”

More info on Linda’s work for Bristol Beacon and the works of our other artists will be posted in the coming weeks.

23/10/2023

The next of the four artists who I’ve been working with, on a series of commissioned artworks made in response to the refurbished & relaunched Bristol Beacon is Libita Sibungu.

Libita is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cornwall. Their work draws on their British-Namibian heritage in order to make discursive works that explore personal histories in order to challenge accepted dominant historical narratives.

Libita was the recipient of the 2022 Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award and the winner of The Arts Foundation Future Award in 2021, while their work has been presented by Temple Bar Gallery & Studios , Somerset House , Cabaret Voltaire , Gasworks London , Spike Island , and the 57th Venice Biennale

Libita’s solo and collaborative projects collage together the mediums of text, performance, drawing, photography and sound, which then become site specific installations and events. These poetic arrangements draw on their African-Celtic heritage and lived experience. They host conversations and dialogues about intergenerational trauma and colonial legacies inscribed in bodies, memory and time. Through ongoing research into extractive industries such as mining, Libita creates bodies of work that expose organic materials (such as silt and stone) to light, air and sound, in order to create a space for grief, catharsis and healing.

Libita has been given an open invitation to propose her own response to Bristol Beacon and its position on the water. Developed through workshops with artists, writers, and historians, Libita explores Bristol’s waterways, culminating in “a different reimagined history, with guided meditations, fiction writing, sound baths, and water rituals. Internally I’ve been asking; what do we do when there isn’t a place for us to go to remember.”

More on Libita’s artwork and our other artists to come in the next few weeks!

21/10/2023

Rana Begum is the next of the four artists I’ve been working with, on a series of commissioned artworks which will pay an integral role in spaces within the refurbished & relaunched Bristol Beacon

Rana is a Bangladesh born artist, now based in London. Her work ranges from drawing, painting and wall-based sculpture to large-scale public art projects. Her use of repetitive geometric patterns – found both within Islamic art and the industrial cityscape – takes its inspiration from childhood memories of the rhythmic repetition of daily recitals of the Qur’an. Light has always been fundamental to her process, with works that absorb and reflect varied densities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial.

As well as solo exhibitions with galleries including The Box Plymouth , Tate St Ives , Jhaveri Contemporary & May Vienna , Rana has been commissioned to create artworks for public buildings and outdoor spaces in London & Taiwan

Rana has said that she wanted to develop an artwork “that reflects the diversity of sound and music performed in the halls through the rhythms and patterns we use, and ensure the work responds to different forms of light”

Rana’s artwork for Bristol Beacon will also be her first foray into the medium of textiles, and as such she has collaborated with Bristol based textile studio Dash & Miller throughout the process.

More on Rana’s artwork and our other artists to come in the next few weeks!

20/10/2023

Introducing Giles Round one of the four artists I’ve been working with, on a series of commissioned artworks which will pay an integral role in spaces within the refurbished & relaunched Bristol Beacon.

Giles Round is an artist currently living in St Leonards-on-Sea, with more-than-human companion Philip Seymour Hoffman Round 🐕

Giles works across art, design and architecture, utilising a wide range of techniques and approaches within these disciplines. Much of Giles’ work takes the form of long-term, open-ended projects, with exhibitions, companies & organisations themselves becoming the mediums used artworks. Through these, Giles has created conceptual frameworks to interrogate the role of the artist, thinking of them as an agent of transformation.

Giles has previously worked under the nomenclature The Grantchester Pottery, and been commissioned by South Bank Centre & Art on the Underground for site specific works

Giles described the artwork for Bristol Beacon as “a portrait of the building itself”

More on Giles’ artwork, and our other artists, to come in the next few weeks!
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Photos used courtesy of Paul Blakemore Field Art Projects Bristol Beacon Giles Round

01/09/2023

BRISTOL BEACON ANNOUNCES ARTIST COMMISSIONS

I’ve been working with artists Rana Begum, Linda Brothwell, Giles Round and Libita Sibungu on a series of commissions as part of the Bristol Beacon refurbishment project.

The artworks are a response to this iconic building, its history, architecture and role as a venue for music-making. They include the textiles and fabrics within the new performance spaces, an architectural installation within the historic Lantern space, a contemporary intervention on the façade of the Lantern building, and a work that draws on Bristol Beacon’s relationship with the water that surrounds and flows through the city.

You can read more about the project on my website and look out for further posts next month as we begin to share the development of each of the commissions.

31/08/2018

Really exciting to see a series of new works being installed at Paintworks in Bristol by artists proposed by Field Art Projects.

Jacob Dahlgren, Flore Nove Josserand and Sinta Ta**ra have all responded to the sites' history as a paint and varnish factory with humorous and colourful works that complement a new area of housing by architects Stride Treglown.

The site is open to the public, and within the area around the brilliant Photography space Martin Parr Foundation, so if you haven't visited that yet, then a good moment to go.

21/05/2018

Janet Cardiff's acclaimed work Forty Part Motet, comes to the South West

We’re delighted to see Janet Cardiff’s internationally acclaimed sound installation, Forty Part Motet, come to the southwest as part of Groundwork, a season of international contemporary art in Cornwall until September 2018. Originally produced by Field Art Projects in 1999, Cardiff reworked Thomas Tallis’ remarkable choral piece Spem in allium by recording each of the 40 voices individually and playing them back each through their own speaker. You can experience the work from 25 May to 27 August at the Richmond Chapel in Penzance, presented by Newlyn Art Gallery and the Exchange.

02/05/2018

Field Art Projects is a member of The Bristol DIY Network; an independent gathering of arts organisations and arts practitioners, large and small, funded (Arts Council, Bristol City Council) and unfunded, all of whom deliver cultural programmes within the city of Bristol.

We meet regularly to advocate for the sector and to discuss and inform policy, as well as forming working groups in response to specific issues and to develop shared activity. This thinking feeds directly into the wider cultural conversations happening at a high level in the city through the Cultural Strategy Steering Group.

The group’s members work across different scales and different artforms; some specialise in participatory opportunities, others seek out an audience; some charge, some don’t; and some provide complex programmes that sit across a number of strands.

Together, we are committed to the successful future of our city, and the creativity of both Bristol and Bristolians.
Network members include Bristol Old Vic, Watershed, Knowle West Media Centre, Artspace Lifespace, Field Art Projects, Circomedia, Architecture Centre, Colston Hall, Bristol Culture, Room 13, The British Paraorchestra and Friends, Zion, The Trinity Centre and many others including independent artists.

The date of the next wider DIY meeting for 2018 has now been set and a venue will be confirmed shortly. If you are interested in joining the DIY Network or contributing to one of the working groups, please come along on Monday 11th June 2018, 12 to 2pm.

If you are an independent artist, practitioner or smaller organisation unable to attend a meeting, you can share ideas, views and concerns with us via Theatre Bristol who help to administer the group, or one of the members. We are working on a bursary scheme to help those who are independent to be involved, particularly in working groups and sitting on the committee. If this is you please contact us via Sarah at Theatre Bristol ([email protected]) to discuss your requirements.

If you would like to find out more, please get in touch for more information, via [email protected]

Address

Bath Road
Bristol
BS4 3EH

Website

http://www.fieldartprojects.com/

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