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How Not to Commission

This article examines public art commissioning practices in Scotland, with particular emphasis on strategies of participation and ‘relational aesthetics’. The question it addresses is whether or not the models of practice proposed by theorists such as Claire Bishop and Nicolas Bourriaud provide a viable alternative to conventional forms of monumental public art, and the commissioning processes through which they are supported. After providing an outline of the institutional framework that has dominated recent of public art production in Scotland, the article summarises the critical discourse that has attempted to displace the traditional definition of public art as a permanent object, with practices derived from Joseph Beuys’ concept of ‘social sculpture’. It takes as a case study a work entitled ‘How Not To Cook’ by the Polish artist Aleksandra Mir, which was commissioned by the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, in 2009, and which involved an ambitious programme of participatory events focused on the social rituals involved in the preparation and consumption of food. The discussion of this was related to the international series of ‘banquet’ sculptures by the American artist Lucy Orta, with particular reference to the event that took place in Bolzano, in the Italian Tyrol, in 2002. The article was commissioned by the online journal PAR+RS, and has received two substantial and supportive ‘comments’. It has also been cited/quoted in the article ‘I Am The Space Where I Am’ by Sarah Lowndes (April 2010, also in PAR+RS) and in Public Arts, a report by Kiri Jarden for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (July 2010). It should also be noted that the author contributed to the ‘How Not To Cook’ project with a lecture (‘Public Space in a Private Time: the predicament of contemporary public art’), delivered to an audience of c.100 delegates at a ‘potluck’ banquet in Portobello (April 2009).