6 - 7 February
S1 Artspace, Sheffield

 Artist and Professor Keith Wilson leads S1 Artspace’s retreat. This is the fifth in the year long Syllabus programme for ten artists.

This weekend session focuses on the challenges, considerations and potential pitfalls of commissioning and presenting new work in a variety of contexts. With contributions from Brian Griffiths, Sally Shaw and Tom Morton, it will provide an opportunity for participants to consider who is involved in allowing their work to go public, and how context might alter the perception of it.

Artist Brian Griffiths will discuss his experience of creating major public commissions such as his Art on the Underground project in 2007, Brian has also taught in the sculpture department at the RCA and is now working mainly at the Royal Academy Schools. Sally Shaw is Head of Programme at Modern Art Oxford and previously managed the Fourth Plinth commissions. Before this Sally was Senior Curator for Art on the Underground.

Tom Morton comes from both a critic’s and commissioner’s perspective through his many years as contributing editor at Frieze and acting as independent curator at large. He is also a practitioner, writing his own literary fiction as well as reviews and catalogue essays. All will come together with Keith to discuss the successes and the failures that come with the commissioning of new work.

Saturday 6 February
10am - 6.30pm (followed by dinner at S1 Artspace)
S1 Artspace, Park Hill, S2 5QX

On day one, the artists will be at S1 Artspace’s new gallery at Park Hill, the iconic Brutalist estate and largest listed structure in Europe. There will be self-led crits and a tour of the site.

In summer 2015, Keith was commissioned to produce a permanent new work for the new imagined sculpture park. His plinths and the newly created terraced site will become the future site for the display of new commissioned public sculptures, and will provide the context for a new S1 Artspace on a much larger scale at Park Hill. This provides a unique set of conditions, partner organisations and audiences for us to consider during our sessions on commissioning work for the public realm.

Sunday 7 February
10am - 6.00pm
S1 Artspace, Trafalgar House, S1 4JT

On day two, the artists will be based at Keith’s studio amongst the wider S1 studio cohort at Trafalgar House, revealing the specific context of S1 – setup as affordable studios to encourage the production of new work, from which the gallery and project space evolved. Trafalgar House’s unique environment where the gallery is open to overlooking studios and vice versa provides a fitting context to consider the commissioning of new work and how this translates from the artists’ studio into the gallery space and beyond into the wider public realm.

Please note that we have selected the participants for this year's The Syllabus programme.

The start date for Syllabus II 2016/17 is September 2016 and the artists have already been selected.

To receive information on the next round of Open Calls for this and other programmes at Wysing, please subscribe to our e-bulletin, click here.