About Public Art

The spectrum of artistic practice represented by the term ‘public art’ encompasses art commissioned as a response to the notion of place, art commissioned as part of the designed environment and process-based artistic practice that does not rely on the production of an art object. When searching for a definition, it is helpful to regard public art as the process of artists responding to the public realm.

An assessment of the public art sector suggests that the roles that artists have include working:

as members of design teams contributing to regeneration projects through research, reflection and resulting propositions which address the context and functions of a specific site;
to engage creatively with communities in order to explore and articulate issues of local significance;
as commentators, researchers and provocateurs producing either permanent or temporary public art.