Project Space 11 in Plymouth market set to demystify and promote contemporary arts

Project Space 11 is set to ignite the Plymouth arts scene with its city market place location, with its aim to demystify and promote contemporary art and create a hub for South West artist. Arts+Culture caught up with them to find out more…

What are the reasons behind Project Space 11? How did you get together and why did you set it up?
The five of us met through various creative projects in the South West, whether the X-Panel project organised by Spacex in Exeter, Control Point – a temporary facility at Plymouth Arts Centre – or simply by making art in and around Plymouth. We had all talked about the possibilities of running an artist-led space, with the particular aim of encouraging connections between South West-based artists and artist-led organisations with artists and artist-led groups nationally and even internationally. We hope that Project Space 11 will be able to provide a platform for collaboration with our contemporaries, creating a hub for artist practice in the city.

The How to Look? project sets out to ask how contemporary art can be accessible to a non-art audience. How important and how difficult is it to engage a non-art audience, and is this something that’s going to run through all Project Space 11′s work?
As Project Space 11 is situated in Plymouth City Market a lot of the audience will be incidental – passers by, market traders and shoppers. Our inaugural project, How to Look?, showcases four artist commissions that each consider how artists’ work can provide a key or tools to assist the audience in engaging with contemporary art.

While we’re wary of being too prescriptive in terms of overly-encouraging viewers to connect with the work, we would like non-art audiences to be able to access ideas behind the work in a number of different ways. So we will be scheduling artist talks, workshops and activities related to our projects that viewers can attend.

It’s important that we’re sensitive to the context of the Project Space – if some market shoppers are interested in what we’re doing, but don’t have much experience of visiting galleries or engaging with contemporary art, then we want to address that in our programme, but if some aren’t interested then of course that’s fine. It’s not in our remit to ‘convert’ them to contemporary art! For us it’s more about demystifying and promoting contemporary art practice.

Project Space 11 is situated inside Plymouth City Market. What are the opportunities and difficulties from being there?
It’s a great opportunity in terms of it being quite an unusual space to show contemporary art – very different from the white cube aesthetic. The artists we have been working with so far have been really positive about being located in the market. The market has a great atmosphere and the unit offers some really interesting challenges in terms of the installation and presentation of work. We had a meet and greet picnic last Tuesday and it was fantastic to see how many market traders and shoppers were positive about what’s happening with the Project Space.

The unit is quite small compared to the square footage of many art spaces, but its great to use something that could initially be quite challenging to push our ideas forward for curation and programming. For example if we were talking about a group show of 10 or more people, to look at the space you might think it would be improbable to exhibit successfully. However, issues like this raise questions about other appropriate ways of exhibiting work: perhaps an online project, an artist publication or a multi-venue event. The so-called ‘limitations’ of the space will hopefully make for a more interesting and diverse programme.

You’re all artists working in Plymouth, how does being a director of Project Space 11 affect your own practices?
I think it challenges our practices in a positive way. As we are lucky enough to be working with or in discussion with artists whose work we admire, it encourages you to raise the bar for your own work, and certainly to really critically engage with it. There may be less time for making or reflecting on our own work now, but when we do we approach it more rigorously.

You mention your the programme intends to be larger than its physical home. What do you have in store beyond the How to Look? project?
In the near future we will be putting on a group exhibition that responds to the idea of propaganda within the arts: including artist and artist group’s visions of what contemporary art could or should be, their reactions to art organisations’ agendas, and how artists respond to hierarchies within the visual arts ecology. We will be exhibiting a solo show of newly commissioned work by a Plymouth born, Cornwall-based artist. Beyond that we have many project ideas that we would like to realise, all of which we hope will encourage an interactive discourse with local and national artist-led activity, creating a platform for artist practice in the city.

(image: How to Sea)