Public art has been a part of our cities for centuries. Public art fulfills a range of roles: it can provide educational insights, commemorate individuals and moments, convey social messages, and embody the spirit and values of a community. Public artworks today breathe new life and meaning into everyday ordinary spaces, inviting us to challenge the way we perceive our surroundings.
There has been a notable shift from static monuments, which often represent outdated ideals or honor controversial figures, to dynamic, rotating public art programs that reflect the present community and address themes relevant today. The transformative impact of new public art programs, which often include trails or routes to follow, has fostered new connections and increased the public’s engagement with art, sparking conversations and strengthening a sense of community. Around the globe, cities are increasingly acknowledging the importance of public art, with many now embracing rotating art programs to keep their urban spaces exciting. One of the most notable public sculpture trails is the High Line in New York City, which is built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan's West Side. Opened in 2009, the High Line is a 0.5-mile-long public park that features not only lush plants and greenery but also rotating artworks, transforming this unique park into an outdoor gallery. A more recent example of a city launching a public art initiative is Abu Dhabi, which unveiled its first-ever Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennale, titled "Public Matter," last year. This public sculpture park delves into how the environment, community, and urban development shape the city's unique identity. Beautifully curated, The Abu Dhabi Art Biennale balanced a selection of established and emerging artists, mostly from and working in the region, alongside a few select international artists.
In exploring the topic of public art and monumental sculptures, LVH Art spoke with Stella Ioannou, the Artistic Director of Sculpture in the City (London) and Founding Director of LACUNA, a studio renowned for executing large-scale public art, to gain deeper insight into this area. As the driving force behind Sculpture in the City since 2010, she has been a pioneer in bringing monumental sculptures into London’s urban environment. Sculpture in the City brings contemporary sculptures into the heart of London’s financial district, one of the most architecturally dense places in the city. We spoke with Stella about the crucial role that scale plays in such a tightly packed urban environment, where large, bold works must interact thoughtfully with towering buildings and busy public spaces. As Stella remarked, “When I first started working on the project back in 2010 the galleries thought I was crazy when I was calling and saying, ‘I need big pieces, and I need them in color’. And they said, ‘Well, what do you mean Stella?’ And I said, ‘Well, come and stand next to the Gherkin with me, and then let's have a conversation about scale.’ In the intervening 14 years, we've got a lot more tall buildings in that particular vicinity of the city, which has created a really dynamic urban environment. So the consideration of scale is about being able to place works which will not get lost, and which will sometimes even challenge those kinds of really monumental buildings.”
In a district where people are often rushing to work, many in professions unrelated to art, public art offers a unique opportunity to engage with a new audience. While Sculpture in the City has become a highly anticipated event in the London art community, with art enthusiasts following the trail set out by the organisation and voyaging to see specific works, most people encounter the sculptures unexpectedly, often while going about their daily routines. This unplanned interaction eliminates any barriers of entry that exist in the artworld. Even though many museums in London offer free admission, the physical structure and formal nature of the art world is still a barrier for many. For many, being unexpectedly stopped on their way to work by a sculpture may be their first step into the art world. As Stella told us, “Public art really brings joy, life, humanity, inspiration, and is something that welcomes people into public spaces that they're not always necessarily comfortable in doing. Can we call it a gateway drug to more art? I mean, the threshold isn't there. We've removed the threshold completely so it's fully accessible. And people then get to experience art naturally and familiarize themselves with contemporary art, which can be quite a difficult subject for a lot of people.”
This shift in one's environment, created for example by placing a public artwork along their daily commute route, is stimulating and prompts people to react in different ways. More on this, Stella discusses how effective public art often elicits a strong response, and that the response isn’t always a positive one. She shares the story of someone who initially disliked a work, only to develop an appreciation for it over time, demonstrating how public art has the power to evolve in people’s minds, transforming from something uncomfortable to something beloved. Stella noted that perhaps the most controversial work they featured in the past was Martin Creed’s “Work No. 2814,” which consisted of plastic bags attached to a tree. As Stella shared with us, “We faced so much criticism at so many different levels and by people from all walks of life. Some didn’t like it because the artwork didn't show the artist's hand. But it was really interesting, because when I dug into it with people, it turned out that the piece reminded a lot of them of either themselves, a partner, or their parents hoarding plastic bags. Interestingly, Martin used the bags because he hoarded them. The strong reaction from these people stemmed from the anxiety they were carrying. Actually, someone I know quite well came on a tour of this work with me, and they were extremely vocal about how they despised it. We had a long dialogue about it. Then that same person, eight months later, came to me and said, ‘You know what I told you about Martin's work all those months ago? Well, I've completely changed my mind now. I really love it, and I'm going to be really upset when it goes.’ That goes to show how people often react to something slightly foreign and different that they have no familiarity with. But then they normalize it through seeing it everyday. This person worked in the area where the work was located, so they would have walked past it often. Eight months later, the artwork had become a familiar part of their daily routine, allowing them to sit with the emotions that had initially made them so uncomfortable.”
A crucial aspect of successful public art is ensuring it fits with its environment and context. While Sculpture in the City showcases preexisting sculptures, the team collaborates with the artist to select a location that enhances the artwork and its surroundings. In our conversation Stella stressed the importance of collaborating with the artist and remaining flexible to new ideas: “When I met the artist Alice Channer, I remember her explicitly saying, ‘I really want to cite this work in an urban space’. And I said, ‘great, let's go look at all the urban spaces together and see what we can do’. And we found a few spaces, but none of them sang to her or worked particularly well with the work. I told her I knew of one other space that I can think would work really well, but that it's not urban. I took her to the churchyard at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate. She'd literally caught a glimpse of the churchyard, and she was like, ‘That's it. That's where I want it to be.’ And what was lovely is that the piece is called Burial, and we cited it on an ancient burial ground. There are all these connections that you can find if you are open to it and trust the process.”
Public art undoubtedly presents more challenges than displaying monumental pieces in a museum setting or on museum grounds. First, you’re working with a much larger group of stakeholders. Second, the artwork is often placed in bustling areas where art hasn’t been installed before. Stella walked us through both of these points. When discussing the challenges of working with various stakeholders, Stella explained to us, “You become a diplomat. And you speak lots of different languages. You speak artist language, you speak landowner language, you speak partner language, you speak engineer language, and so on. We have to go through a whole legislative process from the City of London side, which includes compliance, health and safety, everything that brings fear to everybody. There are so many steps a public sculpture must go through that people don’t see. But when I feel as though nothing is progressing, I remind myself to trust the process, and that with determination, things always fall into place.”
To give us a better understanding of just how complicated it can be to install a public work of art, Stella walked us through the entire process of realising Bridging Home, London by Do Hu Shu. “We started off with Do Hu Shu wanting to make the artwork out of fabric. The question of, ‘How do you install a fabric work on a walkway that doubles as afire escape, located above a busy road?’, became all we thought about. We spent two months working on that, which included countless tests to determine if we could make the fabric fire-resistant in any way. In the end, we agreed that fabric was not the suitable material, and Do Hu Shu reverted to using polystyrene. The artwork isa replica of the house he grew up in, but it needed to be designed so that if people needed to escape the building on fire, there was a wide enough opening for them to run through. The installation itself was difficult as well.Normally if we need to close roads for an intal we can, but because this was a bus route, we weren't able to close it. We ended up doing single lane closures, so the traffic was still running whilst the artwork was being installed. I can go on and on about how challenging it was, but that just gives you a little taster of what it can take to realize a public work of art.”
