The Sculpture x Incidental Unit
The Sculpture x Incidental Unit: We Appreciate It’s Been Some Time Since Our Last Letter
Incidental Unit will host a series of conversations inspired by the recent reactivation of Barbara Steveni’s correspondence with industry. Join us to explore themes of art and economics, work as context, archival excavation, and unfinished business.
Founded in 2016 by Barbara Steveni as the third iteration of the Artist Placement Group, Incidental Unit continues her legacy by connecting and celebrating artists working in extra-artistic contexts, from industry and government to healthcare. Since Steveni’s passing in 2020, the network has embraced her preoccupation of ‘not knowing’ and John Latham’s concept of ‘the incidental’ to deepen conversations around creative agency.
The Upper 2 Gallery
12 – 5pm
No booking necessary
This is the third in a series of live conversations activating The Sculpture (1971), a key work from the Artist Placement Group, as part of Barbara Steveni: I Find Myself. These discussions are programmed in collaboration with Policy Lab, Incidental Unit and the London Residency Network.
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Policy Lab is a part of the UK government which brings many of the ideas and ethos of the Artist Placement Group into contemporary policymaking. This includes bringing together a highly diverse and interdisciplinary group of practitioners to bridge between internal and outside perspectives and directly engage artists in the policymaking process.
The Artist Placement Group (APG) was initiated by Barbara Steveni in 1965. The group devised the concept of the ‘Placement’ as a strategy to position artists within industrial corporations and government departments in order to explore the role of art in the decision-making processes of society. In her role as primary strategist and spokesperson she came to see her critical administrative role negotiating behind the scenes as representative of women’s invisible labour more widely, in later years understanding this as her own art practice. Barbara Steveni: I Find Myself includes the important Artist Placement Group work, The Sculpture from APG’s 1971 Hayward Gallery and Dusseldorf exhibitions. The Sculpture comprised a boardroom table with chairs in the gallery space where the APG artist members led discussions with industrialists and government officials as the main focus of the exhibition. Steveni was integral to these negotiations, so it’s in the spirit of highlighting her discursive approach to art-making that we’re re-staging this live artwork in collaboration with Policy Lab, Incidental Unit and the London Residency Network.