Artangel is a

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-based

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

organisation founded in 1985 by

Roger Took Roger Florian Took (1944 – 29 July 2011) was a British art historian, museum curator, author and convicted child sex offender who lived in London, Ireland, and Russia. In the course of his career, he ran several museums in England, was a fell ...

. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web. Notable past works include the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

-winning ''

House A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...

'' by

Rachel Whiteread Dame Rachel Whiteread (born 20 April 1963) is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993. Whiteread was one of the Young British Ar ...

(1993), '' Break Down'' by

Michael Landy Michael Landy (born 1963) is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He is best known for the performance piece installation '' Break Down'' (2001), in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the ''Art Bin'' project (2010) at the ...

(2001) and ''Seizure'' by

Roger Hiorns Roger Hiorns (born 1975) is a British Contemporary artist based in London. His primary media is sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including metals, wood and plastics. He also works in the media of video and photograp ...

(2008–2010), also nominated for the Turner Prize in 2009. A 2002 article in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' described the organisation as creating "art that operates by ambush, rather than asking you to pay up before you see it", while a 2007 profile in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' noted that "Artangel has worked with exceptional artists to produce some of the most resonant works of our time, in some very unusual places". These have included a condemned council flat (''Seizure'', 2008–2010), a former postal sorting office (''Küba'', 2005), a vacated general plumbing store (''An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty'', 2002) and the former Oxford Street branch of the C&A department store (''Break Down'', 2001).

Ongoing projects

While many of Artangel's projects are intrinsically temporary, certain works have a longer-term remit. 1 January 2000 saw the launch of Jem Finer's ''

Longplayer ''Longplayer'' is a self-extending composition by British composer and musician Jem Finer which is designed to continue for one thousand years. It started to play at midnight on 1 January 2000, and if all goes as planned, it will continue wi ...

'', a musical composition that will continue playing until the end of the year 2999. ''Longplayer'' can be heard via an online stream, at listening posts internationally and at occasional live performances. In 2007, a former municipal library building in the Icelandic town of Stykkishólmur was transformed into ''VATNASAFN/Library of Water'', a project by

Roni Horn Roni Horn (born September 25, 1955) is an American visual artist and writer. The granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was born in New York City, where she lives and works. She is currently represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels an ...

that includes an archive of glacial water and a selection of weather 'reports' by residents of

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. It operates as a community space and is host to a writers' residency programme.

Ilya Ilya, Iliya, Ilia, Ilja, or Ilija (russian: Илья́, Il'ja, , or russian: Илия́, Ilija, ; uk, Ілля́, Illia, ; be, Ілья́, Iĺja ) is the East Slavic form of the male Hebrew name Eliyahu (Eliahu), meaning "My God is Yahu/Jah." ...

and Emilia Kabakov's 1998 work '' The Palace of Projects'' resides permanently at a former salt store in the

Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (German Zeche Zollverein) is a large former industrial site in the city of Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The first coal mine on the premises was founded in 1847, and mining activities took pla ...

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...

, Germany. Notable patrons as special angels include

Carolyn Dailey Carolyn Dailey (born September 4, 1959) is a British-American entrepreneur and commentator. Based in London, she was formerly Time Warner's top executive in Europe. In 2016, she launched Creative Entrepreneurs, a membership-based learning an ...

. Artangel were named one of London's most influential curators in 2017 by Something Curated.

The Artangel Collection

Works, such as

Richard Billingham Richard Billingham (born 25 September 1970) is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere. Billingham is bes ...

's ''Fishtank'' (1998), Paul Pfeiffer's ''The Saints'' (2007) and Francis Alÿs' ''Seven Walks'' (2004), continue to be exhibited internationally as part of The Artangel Collection. The collection was launched in partnership with

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

in 2011 to enable notable film and video installations to be presented across the UK. Over 25 moving image works – commissioned by Artangel since 1993 – are available for loan, free of charge, to publicly funded UK museums and galleries.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Arts in London Arts organisations based in the United Kingdom