Artist Placement. Caveat at Argos

Artist Placement is a two-day series of presentations and discussions on the Artist Placement Group (APG), its ongoing relevance, and current projects and initiatives that taking inspiration from it.

What else can come of making art?

Artist Placement is a Caveat programme that aims to address the current search for new organisational models, production schemes, and hybrid forms of organization in the art world. The programme takes as a starting point the Artist Placement Group (APG), a milestone in Conceptual Art in Britain, to address the resurgent interest in reinventing the means of making and disseminating art.

APG provided an important historical counter model anticipating many of the issues facing cultural workers today, in terms of seeking different forms of patronage, repurposing and reutilising different spaces, and thinking of ways to reorganize the art world.

Between 1966 and the turn of the eighties, APG negotiated approximately fifteen placements for artists lasting from a few weeks to several years. First within industries (often large corporations such as British Steel) and later within UK government departments such as the Department of the Environment and the Scottish Office, APG arranged that artists could work to an ‘open brief’. Their placements were not required to produce tangible results, but the engagement itself could potentially benefit both host organisations as well as the artists in the long-term.

Today, there is a trend of artists reclaiming, or finding recuperative possibilities in practicing within, corporations and companies. Do these practices hold the promise of a transformative model for today's art world? Re-examing APG’s initial gesture, through looking at the present, is timely now.

Artist Placement offers a series of presentations and discussions that take inspiration from the Artist Placement Group (APG). With Gareth Bell-Jones, David Hilmer Rex, Antony Hudek, Victoria Ivanova, Joséphine Kaeppelin, Patrick Bernier & Olive Martin, Vijai Patchineelam, Scott William Raby, Barbara Steveni, Arno van Roosmalen and Caveat ‘dramaturgs’ Steyn Bergs and Greg Nijs, the programme will address the past and present relevance of APG. Through the presentation of current projects and initiatives that were inspired by APG, such as Diakron, Social Sensibility, Incidental Unit, the programme equally aims to open up perspectives for future activities of Caveat.

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Free entrance.