Art Everywhere

July 21st – August 31st 2014
www.arteverywhere.org.uk

by Katharine Fry

Over assorted muffins and train announcements, above Waterloo Station in the Cabin Bar, Art Everywhere launched on Wednesday July 16th, 2014. Now in its 2nd year, Art Everywhere sees members of public (well, 38,000 via Facebook) select the nation’s favourite 25 artworks to be displayed on poster and digital billboards throughout the UK for a six week period.

Antony Gormley, who has created a special digital animation for the occasion, and Grayson Perry, as his alter ego Claire, were in attendance to announce the chosen works and reveal them on Waterloo’s horizontal run of snazzy screens.

Gormley spoke of the importance of works in the public collection; they form part of our collective visual memory, while Grayson stressed a need for visual or creative literacy to be valued in the same way as reading, writing and arithmetic. Give a child a pencil and they will draw, he said.

After the grand unveil of painting, sculpture and photography from the last 200 years, we were whisked off on black cab tours to see the works in situ. After much sweating in traffic, we found ourselves cruising past Gilbert and George’s stained glass Existers, well-suited to the tile clad of Westfield London. We didn’t make it back in time to catch any others before the launch’s 1pm cut-off so it remains to be seen how this form of public engagement will function. Will someone stumble across Dame Laura Knight’s Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring by a bus shelter on a country road and feel inspired to journey for an encounter with the real thing? I hope so.

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Art Everywhere will take place on over 30,000 billboards and outdoor sites across the UK from July 21st – August 31st 2014.

Antony Gormley & Grayson Perry unveiled the shortlist on the largest indoor advertising screen in the UK – Motion@Waterloo at London’s Waterloo Station. The list includes one of Grayson Perry’s recent works, The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal.

The shortlisted works in order of popularity are as follows:

David Hockney, My Parents, 1977
Dora Carrington, Farm at Watendlath, 1921
Dame Laura Knight, Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring, 1943
Grayson Perry, The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, 2012
Stanhope Alexander Forbes, A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach, 1885
Michael Andrews, Melanie and Me Swimming, 1978-9
George Frederic Watts, Ellen Terry (‘Choosing’), 1864
Augustus Leopold Egg, The Travelling Companions, 1862
Patrick Caulfield, Pottery, 1969
John Hoyland, Memory Mirror, 1981
Rose Wylie, Early Memory Series No.2: Doodle Bug, 1998
Eileen Agar, Slow Movement, 1970
Julia Margaret Cameron, lago (Study from an Italian), 1867
Gilbert & George, Existers, 1984
John Constable, Study of Cirrus Clouds, c.1822
Edward Collier, Trompe l’oeil with Writing Materials, c.1702
Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801
Ivon Hitchens, A River Pool, 1951
Henry Moore, King and Queen, 1952-3, cast 1957
Hans Holbein the Younger, A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?), 1526-8
William Blake, The Circle of the Lustful, 1824-7
Gillian Wearing, Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say I’M DESPERATE, 1992-1993
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Queen Elizabeth I (‘The Ditchley portrait’), c.1592
Ben Nicholson, 1940-42 (two forms), 1940-42
Marc Quinn, Self, 2006