Abstract/Summary

This two-year research and exhibition project investigates the various materials involved in artistic production through a focus on chance and contingency in the procedures of the realisation and presentation of sculpture. Contributing to the discussion of contemporary sculpture, this project offers significant new ways of presenting chance and contingency as results of formations and processes of material transformations that cannot be named, but have instead the potential to accumulate and become sculpture. The project also de-stabilises the central and autonomous role of the artist and the single and distinct artwork through implicating museum and gallery staff as active participants in the economy of artistic production, and dispersing artworks across sites and exhibitions, repositioning and extending questions of authorship, trust, care and responsibility in relation to the production and display of sculpture, and stressing the importance of sprawling, collaborative networks for current artistic work. The significance of the project was awarded a Fellowship in Contemporary Art at the British School in Rome, and was disseminated through a new body of artworks touring in large-scale group and solo exhibitions to The British School of Rome, Italy; MOT International, and Brussels Art Fair, Belgium; Royal Academy and Camden Arts Centre, London; accompanied by a series of talks, a live performance, and a new book. The project reached an international audience of over 100,000 visitors and its impact was widely recognised in features and peer-reviews in The Guardian, Artist Newsletter, This is Tomorrow, The Quietus, and Elephant Magazine.