Contemporary British Art and its Contested Publicness: The Case of the Artangel Trust Experimenting with Site in Britain Today

Abstract

The Artangel Trust, an independent art commissioning agency founded in London in 1985, is used as a case study to demonstrate how the experimental has come to be found in environmental explorations in Britain today, rather than in more strictly formal ones. Indeed, the curating and the siting of art, especially in a country whose artistic tradition has been defined by its insularity, has become the main locus of experimentations which touch upon creation, but also contextualisation and funding. The way art has recently escaped its institutional inscription has coincided, politically, with a post-Welfare encouragement of a new, specifically British funding model, combining a Continental form of State funding and money coming from philanthropic giving and corporate sponsorship, inspired by the cultural policy of the United States. This new economic context, coupled with a redefinition of the unusual public spaces these works occupy, point to the new conditions of artistic experimentation in Britain.

Keywords

• public art
• philanthropy
• art commissioning
• British cultural policy
• United Kingdom
• art