JR buddies up with Pace to change our cities
The artist joins FuturePace, a new place-making partnership which uses art to invigorate the urban environment
Today’s fine art isn’t just made for galleries. Many of the world’s best-loved contemporary works, such as Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate and Anthony Gormley's Event Horizon, can only be truly enjoyed outdoors. Not only do these works turn our cities into arts spaces; they also present developers and city planners with a new way to improve and enliven the world’s urban environments.
This is where FuturePace comes in. This new partnership is a collaboration between the US fine-art gallery Pace, which represents Agnes Martin, David Hockney, and Chuck Close among others; and Futurecity, a British place-making agency which works within the property sector “to use art and culture as part of a toolkit for providing a contemporary narrative for our towns, cities and urban centres,” as they put it.
Futurecity has already overseen a wide range of public projects, working with such artists as Conrad Shawcross, Leo Villareal and Mark Wallinger; now its collaboration with Pace looks set to take things up a level. FuturePace has announced plans to work with the acclaimed Californian artist James Turrell, Random International – best known for their Rain Room – and Phaidon’s own beloved artist, author and activist, JR. He announced he was joining FuturePace via Instagram, and encouraged us to “#staytuned.”
Or we could just keep an eye on the world’s bigger cities; we’re sure some new work will crop up pretty soon. To find out more about this important artist, order a copy of JR: Can Art Change the World?; for more on the ways we can shape our cities, consider Living in the Endless City.