Site Specific

Why Site Specific Art?

I was doing Urban Exploration! Exploring forbidden derelict strange places.
I'm fascinated by History.
I'm interested in how art can communicate in ways that conventional texts such as books and news reports cannot.

My MA Fine Art was on Site Specific art. A portion of the thesis is represented in the website
http://www.sitespecificart.org.uk

projection, Luna Nera, Valencia, 2006

Site specific art explores the artistic, social and cultural issues surrounding the "reclamation" of public space through art. The city becomes a zone of experimentation and perspective shift, encouraging the artist and the audience to see the landscape and objects within it in a new way. Questions about time, impermanence, memory, artifice and locality arise, providing raw materials for the artist and points of access for the audience.

History is not so much about facts as about perceptions of the world around us, and a sense that we belong to something that has existed before we did. That is why these forgotten places have the ability to hold such resonance.

Titanic HQ project Belfast, Luna Nera 2005 artist Derek Szteliga

Work site-responsively, the artist concerned with the experience of being in those spaces, in the inter-relationship of the past and present, imprints of history and current activity, the physical feel and texture of the space and with bringing those experiences out to the public. The work has the ability to make the audience think about where they are, to reintegrate the lost fragmented forgotten place back into their consciousness.



In 2011 I curated the King's Land project by Nazir Tanbouli, to over a condemned housing estate with hand-drawn /painted murals. And I made a documentary about it, which has been screened widely. View. 

Nazir Tanbouli, The King's Land (detail) 

Starting in 2013 I've been working with Karen Janody, with whom I co-founded Creative City, to create public art in a regenerated housing estate. The Haggerston Monoliths, made by sculptor Bobbi Fennick, is a participatory project with the residents of Haggerston and Kingsland Estates. View