Filip Zezovski Lind

Doing it in Public

Doing it in Public aims to raise awareness, contribute to, and prompt a discussion about the post-industrial society. The focus is a specific socio-economic and geographical context around Vauxhall and Nine Elms, the biggest development site in Europe, and will question what ‘public art’ can be. The concept of public art is changing and our aim is to bring a version of it into the gallery. ‘Doing it in Public’ will conceptually engage with what is public and private in a time when public space in London is rapidly diminishing. Therefore, exhibiting an artist’s work inside a public gallery is challenging what public art can be. Central to Doing it in Public are works by two artists, Paloma Proudfoot and Jakob Rowlinson, newly commissioned by the Royal College of Art Curating Contemporary Art programme.

Their performative work was presented at Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall – an oasis within an increasing jungle of privatised spaces – alongside a panel discussion between curator and writer Jes Fernie; architect Liza Fior; and Helen Nisbet, Curatorial Fellow at Cubitt Gallery.

‘belittle’, Paloma Proudfoot

Against the rigid order of the market rhythms, what emerges as by-products in the peripheries, seams, and off-times? Every morning flowers discarded from the market will be brought to the gallery. Through performance with artist and choreographer Aniela Piasecka, they will be composed together with Proudfoot’s ceramic sculpture and removed by the end of each day. Putting out for display and packing down will become a metaphor for the wider Nine Elms development, with its persistent focus on demolishing and rebuilding. Looking historically at the original Covent Garden market, the performances will also look to evoke the alternative culture that thrived in the pubs that opened doors at 6 am; the cafes selling breakfasts at midnight to the traders alongside clubbed out revellers, and the debauchery the traders became infamous for.

‘The Vauxhalla Lecture Series (or how the People’s Republic of Vauxhalla gained it’s name)’, Jakob Rowlinson

Can research be public art? What intrigues Rowlinson most about Nine Elms is the various ways institutions and developers are keen to inscribe the area with a certain local history. In a similar way, he will blur the lines of fact, truth, and fiction through both an online platform and a performative lecture, employing improvisation and spontaneous physical decision-making during every stage of the process. Rowlinson’s work does not only challenge the very notion of ‘public art’, but also seeks to question how vested interests go about defining a whole area, ‘cherry picking’ aspects of local history to suit their agendas. All of these questions warrant an explorative and research-based practice to unsettle a situation, disrupt and occupy the everyday.

Doing it in Public was programmed by Curating Contemporary Art in partnership with the Sculpture Programme at the Royal College of Art and Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall.