Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
University of Exeter
Everything you need to build a town is here
Description and rationale:
This multiple-sited, permanent public artwork is a Practice-as-Research project exploring walking, regeneration and built environment. Additionally, it generated a Radio 4 interview, a-n feature, curators' tour, fine art publication/talk, OUP chapter and feasibility study.
Approaches and strategies:
Drawing on Wrights & Sites' walking practices to respond to the changing fortunes of a British seaside town's fabric, the research imperatives for the commissioned work were:
1. What role can performance and peripatetic practices play within the context of regeneration-driven 'permanent' public artwork?
2. In contrast to single-sited monumental public art, what strategies might be developed for a more viral engagement between public art and the everyday built environment?
Outputs and evidence:
In line with Exeter's policy of interweaving practice and scholarship, the outcomes of this project are both arts-based and articulated through scholarly and other media.
1. 'Everything you need to build a town is here' (2010) - public artwork by Wrights & Sites (Hodge, Persighetti, Smith, Turner). Hodge (artistic lead) undertook nineteen reconnaissance visits, and made delegated decisions with curators, local authority, funders, designers, foundry, contractors and media. Commissioned as part of 'Wonders of Weston' (www.wondersofweston.org), featuring international artists including Tim Etchells, Lara Favaretto and raumlaborberlin. Funded by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (£45,000 budget from £951,447 award).
2. Hodge represented the programme's artists in a:
a. 'Front Row' interview (2010).
b. Artists' Network Magazine feature (2010).
c. Art in the Open curators' tour (2010).
3. 'The Master Plan' (2012) - CABE-funded, solo-authored (Hodge) book for fine art publishers Book Works, launched with paper/discussion at Whitechapel Gallery, London.
4. Co-authored chapter (with Wrights & Sites) for OUP's 'The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World' (2013 - ISBN: 9780199602001).
5. Commissioned concept/feasibility study (with Wrights & Sites) for Tamar Valley artwork (2012).
