Set nothing in stone

AS the report of the Public Art Research Project has not yet been published, it is only possible to speculate on what it might contain. Will it be supple enough to cope with the evolving definition of public art? Is there, in any case, a consensus about the purpose of public art programmes? Will the report address the bias towards permanent works that results from tying funding to building and construction projects? We can, sadly, only speculate. But if speculation is the best thing on offer: who better to sound that speculation off than those involved in the project?

Sandra Percival is director of the London-based Public Arts Development Trust, the organisation responsible for the regular installations by Irish artists in Heathrow's Irish arrivals and departures section. She contributed to the report on public art in Ireland and was also on the panel of the Nissan prize.

For Percival, the current troubled state of public art, not just in Ireland but around the world is related to the cultural ferment created by Modernism. In earlier times, public monuments were, in principle, able to address widely held values, not just in terms of social aspiration, hut in terms of artistic merit. Happily, unity is no longer available on either question.

An unprecedented rate of change this century has driven art increasingly into areas of specialist interpretation. "Modernism conditioned people to expect art to be presented in museums and galleries," says Percival. "The challenge of public art now is to take art back out of the white cube and address ideas in the public domain. The pitfall here, as Percival sees it, would be to somehow water-down the type of art that is commissioned because of its lack of gallery context. "I think it is wrong to aim for general acceptance of a work, rather than create something that has its own value.

"As far as public art in Ireland is concerned, there has been a lack of singular visions, she says. "It is time to move away from the committee process with too many people involved; time to look at other ways of commissioning work," says Percival. She favours, for instance, an initiative like the Nissan/ IMMA award, with an international jury convened to select a temporary work for which a budget of £40,000 would be allocated.

The winner of the first Nissan/IMMA award is a project from the team of Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones to position quotations from Molly Bloom's soliloquy, in pink neon letters, around the capital. For Hegarty, the advantages of working in a public context are obvious. "It's about audience, of course. Far more people will see the work than if I showed in an elitist gallery space. The notion of the Museum as an institution propping up the artist is no longer tenable, the emphasis has moved away from civic galleries, towards small, temporary, independent artist-lead spaces.

"It is important that art in the public arena reflects the type of art being produced elsewhere," says Cork sculptor Vivienne Roche, who was the Arts Council's representative on the Public Art Research Project, which preceded the drafting of the report.

"There might be a perception that commissions for public art go to a limited pool of people although the OPW's recent catalogue would seem to contradict this. In any case, we have to try to bring more artists into this area."

One of the ways in which this might be achieved would be to take in to greater account the changing picture of art in Ireland.

"As more artists want to escape the confines of the museum or the gallery anyway, the distinction between what is museum art, and what is public art has begun to break down. It is not simply a backlash against the tradition of monumental public works. Artists want to deal with new spaces, new materials, new contexts, says Roche.

Roche sees the present ceiling on the amount of money available for individual projects as an obstacle to installing the right work in the right location. "Many of the projects which look to the Per Cent for Art scheme have been made in the context of road projects. One of these roads might cost £5 million and have an impact over a large landscape. An artwork created for a maximum of £20,000 is going to struggle to have any impact under those circumstances.

Roche also sees a problem in the educational system when it comes to producing artists capable of working in public contexts.

The process of education must extend "throughout the system" according to Roche. She also acknowledges, however, the need for some sort of more consistent vision. "Nobody wants to see a dictatorship of art ... on the other hand it is necessary to find a mechanism that ensures good art gets into the public sphere."

Roche's seems a modest enough ambition, but will the report help achieve it? And when will we see the report?