N55 Land, part of Beyond. Image: Paul O'Neill

This international research project aims to explore the complexities involved in commissioning public art from the perspective of the curators/commissioners, by undertaking an in-depth qualitative study of different commissioning methods and processes, centred on durational projects which have emerged during the past
six years. Locating the Producers seeks to produce significant new knowledge, by investigating whether the recent durational turn in commissioning forms part of a wider critique of established models of nomadic commissioning, and whether there is
evidence of a corrective call for more sustainable forms of commissioning, with a view to transforming the way commissioners work. It will investigate whether this implies an investment in longer-term approaches to place, as a means of impacting upon its social and cultural infrastructure, communities and residents.

The commissioning of temporary site-specific, or place-based, art works is increasingly dominating the contemporary visual arts sector nationally and internationally. In
2005-6, more than one third of Arts Council England’s £2.6 million visual arts budget in the South-West was committed to the production of new work responding to specific places, contexts and situations. Every core funded gallery and arts centre in the South West has an off-site commissioning programme, while every corporate regeneration initiative has an integral contemporary art element. Processes of commissioning art in these contexts have tended to support one-off, short-term engagements with place by
the curator/commissioner and the artist.

Around the world, too, international biennials, scattered-site exhibitions and regeneration initiatives are being developed in response to specific place-bound contexts. Yet, while recognising the particular importance of these commissions in relation to their sites, historically the majority of projects have tended to be short-lived
in their commitment, through the peripatetic involvement of the curator, commissioner, and/or artist, with few taking an embedded, residential and long-term approach to
place. However, there is evidence of durational approaches having been initiated by commissioners, which provide exceptions to the itinerant and nomadic method of engaging with place. Examples initiated by artists include Park Fiction, Hamburg (since 1995); The Land, Chiang Mai (since 1998) and public art commissioning projects such as Nouveaux Commanditaires en Bourgogne, Dijon (since 1997); Consonni, Bilboa (since 1997); Trekrøner Art Plan (since 2002), and Grizedale Arts (since 1999) – each demonstrating a long-term commitment to commissioning art for a specific place.
In the past six years, further durational models of commissioning have begun to proliferate in curatorial circles across visual art sectors. Locating the Producers
proposes to undertake in-depth case studies of six exemplary projects which demonstrate durational approaches to commissioning in relation to place. These include The Blue House, IJburg (2004-2008); Beyond, Leidsche Rijn, (1999-09) and Edgware Road, London, (2008-09). These case studies have been identified as representative of the recent durational turn to public art commissioning, and will form the basis of a detailed analysis of the work of commissioners, curators and artists as they respond to each specific commissioning context. Through a focused study of individual projects within longer-term commissioning processes, this research aims to assess how and why commissioners are adopting durational approaches to commissioning contemporary art for specific places. The research seeks to examine how each commissioning process conceives of time as part of a cumulative curatorial practice.

Locating the Producers will set out to provide a benchmark for visual arts commissioning internationally, to inform working processes across rural and urban, private and public contexts, and to inform the burgeoning number of post-graduate training courses in curating.

Situations has been awarded a prestigious Great Western Research Fellowship award to lead this research project with our partners Dartington College of Arts and ProjectBase in Cornwall, creating a research alliance of international significance in visual arts commissioning over the next three years. Great Western Research (GWR) is a £14 million collaboration between leading research departments in South West universities creating partnerships across the South West between both academia and business. (www.greatwesternresearch.ac.uk)

Paul O'Neill was appointed as the GWR Research Fellow to lead this project in April 2007. Paul is a curator, artist, lecturer and writer, based in London. Since 2003, he has dedicated his time to researching the development of contemporary curatorial discourses since the late 1980s as part of a PhD scholarship at Middlesex University. Between 2001-03, he was gallery curator at London Print Studio Gallery, where he curated group shows such as Private Views; Frictions; A Timely Place...Or Getting Back to Somewhere; All That is Solid and solo projects: Being Childish Billy Childish; Phil Collins Reproduction Timewasted; Harrowed: Faisal Abdu’ Allah and Locating: Corban Walker. He is co- director of MultiplesX; an organisation that commissions and supports curated exhibitions of artist’s editions, which he established in 1997 and has presented exhibitions at spaces such as the ICA, London; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Ormeau Baths, Belfast; Glassbox, Paris and The Lowry, Manchester. He is a visiting lecturer in Visual Culture at Middlesex University and on the MFA Curating programme at Goldsmiths College London. His writing has been published in many books, catalogues, journals and magazines including Art Monthly, Space & Culture, Everything, Contemporary, The Internationaler and CIRCA. His edited anthology of curatorial writing Curating Subjects has just been published by de Appel and Open Editions. He joined Situations in April 2007.