Adam Neate
December 10, 2008
I was watching the news this evening and it featured a story about a London-based public artist called Adam Neate, who’s been receiving a lot of media attention with his latest project: Street Art Action. Basically, he’s an artist that gives away paintings for free, simply placing signed artwork that he has done in public places for people to pick up and take home, if they wish. Although he gives them away for free, his paintings usually sell for up to £43,000 per piece when displayed in galleries. I thought it sounded pretty interesting, so I did a little research and found an article on the Telegraph’s website which states that Neate has given away over a million pounds worth of his artwork to the public for free. The website has a brief interview with Neate who says:
“It is about putting back in what I got out at the beginning of my career…It has always been a dream of mine to do a show around the whole of London, to take over the whole city in one go. I want everybody to be able to see it, but once the pieces are out there I don’t mind what happens to them.”
The article ends with a note about funding and the state of art in the face of the global financial crisis. I thought this might be interesting for anyone looking at public art or the funding that is required for public artists for their case studies. If anyone wants to research this a little further, the Telegraph’s article can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3563192/Adam-Neate%27s-Street-Art-Action-art-for-free.html and Neate’s official website (which includes a gallery) can be found here: www.adamneate.co.uk
Max Deacon
This actually relates to a specific example I was looking at which I included in my case study exploring the reduction of funding in public art. Chester is an area which has been trying hard over the last few yers to raise the profile of its public art but is struggling because of available funding. The website is here http://www.chester.gov.uk/PDF/Arts-Public-Art-Strategy.pdf and includes lots of pros and cons of public art, as well as including examples of how public art can actually lead to economic regeneration and improve tourism…all v interesting! It also puts forward a convincing argument as to why public art is needed at all.
Laura.