Outset Contemporary Art Fund is an arts charity established in 2003, and based in London, England. The charity was the first organisation to utilise cross-institution collective patronage to fund artistic projects in the UK. It has raised over £13 million for arts institutions, exhibitions, education, residency programmes, initiatives, publications and capital campaigns. Outset describes itself as ''“powered by inspiration, driven by expertise, renowned for its engagement, and focused on effective energy and ideas, with a commitment to being there at the outset of impactful change”''. Outset is headquartered in the UK with franchised chapters in Germany, Switzerland, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, and Estonia.

The Outset Partners

Established in 2018, Outset Partners is the largest arts grants programme in the world, funded by a group of individuals. Grants are determined through a consensus-driven process by the collective of individual Outset patrons. Outset Partners has awarded grants totalling over £1 million to date.

Cycle III

The Outset Partners Transformative Grant 2021

Performa The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc. from 1992 to 1997. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Macintosh Quadra, Quadra, Macintosh Centris, Centri ...

, the long-running US-based performance art organisation, were awarded £150,000.

Impact Grants 2021

Grants totalling £125,000 were awarded to UK charity Artists in Residence, London’s nonprofit Bold Tendencies, Paris’s

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, the Filipino organisation Green Papaya Art Projects and the International Curators Forum.

Cycle II

The Outset Partners Transformative Grant 2020

The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh and

Serpentine Galleries The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

in London were jointly awarded £150,000 for their collaborative work on ecology.

Impact Grants 2020

Grants totalling £125,000 were awarded to Kampala-based 32° East (Ugandan Arts Trust); Beit Ha’Gefen gallery in Haifa; the International Curator’s Forum;

Liverpool Biennial Liverpool Biennial is the largest international contemporary art festival in the United Kingdom. Every two years, the city of Liverpool hosts an extensive range of artworks, projects, and a programme of events. The biennial commissions leading ...

;

Nottingham Contemporary Nottingham Contemporary (formerly known as the Centre for Contemporary Art Nottingham (CCAN)) is a contemporary art centre in the Lace Market area of Nottingham. The gallery opened in 2009. The gallery describes its site as being "the oldest in ...

; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.

Cycle I

The Outset Partners Transformative Grant 2019

''The Constituent Museum'', a joint initiative between

The Whitworth The Whitworth is an art gallery in Manchester, England, containing about 55,000 items in its collection. The gallery is located in Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester. In 2015, the Whitworth reopened after it was transfor ...

, Manchester, and the

Van Abbemuseum The Van Abbemuseum () is a museum of modern and contemporary art in central Eindhoven, Netherlands, on the east bank of the Dommel River. Established in 1936, the museum is named after its founder, Henri van Abbe, who loved modern art and wanted ...

, Eindhoven, enabled the galleries to work with the public to plan the reimagining of their institutions.

Impact Grants 2019

Grants totalling £125,000 were awarded to

Hayward Gallery The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Roy ...

, International Curator's Forum,

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

Kunsthalle Basel Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland. As Switzerland's oldest and still most active institution for contemporary art, Kunsthalle Basel forms a vital part of Basel's cultural centre and is located next to the city's ...

, and a final grant awarded jointly to

Chisenhale Gallery Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End. Background The organisation focuses on a programme of commissioned exhibitions, events, performances and talks. The gallery occupies the ground level of a ...

in London, Spike Island in Bristol,

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (also known simply as (the) Baltic, stylised as BALTIC) is a centre for contemporary art located on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. It hosts a frequently changing variety ...

in Gateshead and The Whitworth, Manchester.

Studiomakers

Studiomakers is a major initiative of Outset Contemporary Art Fund. It pioneers new solutions to securing truly-affordable workspaces for the creative industries. Launched in 2016 at an event hosted by Antony Gormley’s studio, Studiomakers was established in response to the rapid reduction of affordable workspaces available to the creative industries in London.

Phase Two

Studiomakers Phase Two pivoted the initiative to provide advocacy, guidance and brokerage. Studiomakers acts as a strategic partner, advising throughout the planning process to help deliver affordable workspace planning obligations, ultimately securing new long-term spaces for the creative industries. In 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Studiomakers was reoriented to provide emergency assistance working closely with the Mayor of London’s ‘Culture At Risk’ office. Studiomakers delivered one-on-one advice sessions, live webinars, legal letter templates, fact sheets and regular newsletters with the assistance of a team of industry professionals including TrustLaw, CBRE,

Dechert LLP Dechert LLP () is an American multinational law firm of more than 900 lawyers with practices in corporate and securities, complex litigation, finance and real estate, financial services, asset management, and private equity. In 2021, the fi ...

and CounterCulture LLP. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic the guidance, rental reductions and pro-bono legal assistance helped over 70 creative and cultural institutions avoid collapse.

Phase One

Studiomakers Phase One established an evidence base for action, partnering with

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

to conduct research, and explored different ways to deliver affordable workspace for artists. Across three years Phase One helped to secure over 60,000sqft of temporary workspace that supported hundreds of artists, events and exhibitions.

The Creative Land Trust

In 2019 Studiomakers and Outset were instrumental in raising £7.5 million to launch th
Creative Land Trust
through a private/public partnership with the

Mayor of London The mayor of London is the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the 1998 Greater London Authority referendum, Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first Directly elected may ...

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

and

Bloomberg Philanthropies Bloomberg Philanthropies is a philanthropic organization that encompasses all of the charitable giving of founder Michael R. Bloomberg. Headquartered in New York City, Bloomberg Philanthropies focuses its resources on five areas: the environmen ...

. The Creative Land Trust aims to purchase properties for use as affordable workspaces for the creative industries in perpetuity, and in 2019 became an independent charitable organisation.

The Studiomakers Prize

From 2017 through to 2019 Outset partnered with Tiffany & Co. to annually award rent-free workspaces to seven outstanding MA Fine Art graduates. The Studiomakers Prize delivered a total of 21 years of free studio space, along with career development workshops, ensuring some of the most talented graduates could continue their creative practice in London.

Outset / Frieze Art Fair Fund to benefit the Tate Collection

In 2003 Outset pioneered the first acquisitions fund connected to an art fair. The partnership between Outset Contemporary Art Fund,

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Frieze London takes place every October in London's Regent's Park. In the US, the fair ran on New York's Randall's Island from 2012–19 and in 2 ...

and

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 ...

enabled the Tate to purchase artwork at the fair for their national collection. The fund raised over £1.5 million. 100 works of art were acquired over ten years from artists including:

Pawel Althamer Pavel (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pavel ...

Hurvin Anderson Hurvin Anderson (born 1965) is a British painter. Early life and education Anderson was born in Birmingham, England, to parents of Jamaican origin. He was educated at Wimbledon College of Art, London and The Royal College of Art, London. Career A ...

, Fikret Atay,

Martin Boyce Martin Boyce (born 1967) is a Scottish sculptor inspired by early 20th century modernism. Boyce was born in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire and educated at Holy Cross High School in Hamilton. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating with ...

Jeremy Deller Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English people, English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is Collaboration, collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the Idealiz ...

, Alexandre de Cunha,

Jimmie Durham Jimmie Bob Durham (July 10, 1940 – November 17, 2021) was an American sculptor, essayist and poet. He was active in the United States in the civil rights movements of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, serving on the ...

Olafur Eliasson Olafur Eliasson ( is, Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's ...

Andrea Fraser Andrea Rose Fraser (born 1965) is a performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of Institutional Critique. Fraser is based in New York and Los Angeles and is currently Department Head and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio of the ...

Thomas Hirschhorn Thomas Hirschhorn (born 16 May 1957) is a Swiss artist. He lives and works in Paris.Randy Kennedy (June 27, 2013)Bringing Art and Change to Bronx''New York Times''. Life and works In the 1980s, Thomas Hirschhorn came to Paris with the will to ...

Jesper Just Jesper Just (born 1974) is a Danish artist, who lives and works in New York. From 1997 to 2003, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He has work in museums including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Modern in London and the ...

, Alan Kane, Bela Kolárová,

Mark Leckey Mark Leckey (born 1964) is a British contemporary artist. His found object art and video pieces, which incorporate themes of nostalgia and anxiety, and draw on elements of pop culture, span several works and exhibitions. In particular, he i ...

Daria Martin Daria Martin (born 1973) is a contemporary American artist and filmmaker based in London and San Francisco since 2002. Working primarily in 16mm film, her work has been exhibited in twenty four solo shows in public galleries including at the Barbic ...

, Jan Mot, Scott Myles, Frank Nitsche,

Henrik Olesen Henrik Olesen (b. 1967) is a Danish artist working in Berlin. He has been featured in exhibitions in New York City, Sweden, and Austria. Olesen was born in Esbjerg. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1989 to 1 ...

Walid Raad Walid Raad (Ra'ad) (Arabic: وليد رعد) (born 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon) is a contemporary media artist. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective, the work of which is produced by Walid Raad. He lives and works in New York, where he is curr ...

Anri Sala Anri Sala (born 1974) is an Albanian contemporary artist whose primary medium is video. Life and career Sala studied art at the Albanian Academy of Arts from 1992 to 1996. He also studied video at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, Pari ...

David Shrigley David John Shrigley (born 17 September 1968) is a British visual artist. He lived and worked in Glasgow, Scotland for 27 years before moving to Brighton, England in 2015. Early life and education Shrigley was born 17 September 1968 in Macclesfi ...

Lorna Simpson Lorna Simpson (born August 13, 1960) is an American photographer and multimedia artist. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as ''Guarded Conditions'' and ''Square Deal''. Simpson is most well-known for her work in c ...

Simon Starling Simon Starling (born 1967) is an English conceptual artist and won the Turner Prize in 2005. Early life Simon Starling was born in 1967 in Epsom, Surrey. He studied photography and art at Maidstone College of Art from 1986 to 1987, then at Trent ...

Tris Vonna-Michell Tris Vonna-Michell (born 1982) is a British artist who performs narratives and constructs installations through the layering of these narratives, photographs and mementos, presented using antiquated technologies and slide projection. Vonna-Michel ...

Pae White Pae White (born 1963) is an American multimedia visual artist who is known for her unique portrayal of nature and rather mundane objects through her creations of suspended mobiles. She currently lives and works between Sonoma CountySonoma County, ...

Akram Zaatari Akram Zaatari (born 1966 in Sidon, Lebanon) is a filmmaker, photographer, archival artist and curator. In 1997, he co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with photographers Fouad Elkoury, and Samer Mohdad. His work is largely based on collecting, stud ...

. Artworks were annually selected by a panel of judges who included: Jan Debbaut (Director,

Tate Collection 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 ...

Paul Schimmel Paul Reinhard Schimmel (born August 4, 1940) is an American biophysical chemist and translational medicine pioneer. Career Paul Schimmel is a Professor of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute. Prior to joining The Scripps Resear ...

(Chief Curator,

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

) and

Suzanne Pagé Suzanne Pagé (born in 1941 in Brittany) is a French curator and museum director. She is currently the artistic director of the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation in Paris. Career Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris In 1973 Pagé began ...

(Director, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris).

Notable acquisitions

*"''Time"'' a

conceptual Conceptual may refer to: Philosophy and Humanities *Concept *Conceptualism *Philosophical analysis (Conceptual analysis) *Theoretical definition (Conceptual definition) *Thinking about Consciousness (Conceptual dualism) *Pragmatism (Conceptual pr ...

work by

David Lamelas David Lamelas (born 1946, Buenos Aires) is an Argentinian artist. A pioneer of Conceptual art, he was involved in Argentina's avant-garde scene in the 1960s. Well known for his sculptures and films, Lamelas lives and works between Los Angeles, Buen ...

consisted of an idea: that people should stand in line and state the time to the adjoining person in the queue. *A grey filing-drawer containing 1,000 blank index cards by

Stanley Brouwn Stanley Edmund Brouwn (25 June 1935 – 18 May 2017) was a Suriname-born Dutch conceptual artist. His works explored dematerialization. As an anonymous artist, he exemplified 1960s conceptualism. His best-known works include “This Way Brouwn� ...

."Time Really Is Money as Tate Coughs up £20,000 The Times, October 21, 2005
Retrieved March 24, 2006 * "Good Feelings in Good Times" by

Roman Ondak Roman Ondak (born August 5, 1966) is a Slovak conceptual artist. Life and career Roman Ondak was born in Žilina. He studied at Academy of Fine Arts and Design ( Slovak: ''Vysoká škola výtvarných umení'', abbr. VŠVU) in Bratislava from 1 ...

was the first performance piece to enter the Tate collection.

The Robson Orr TenTen Award

The TenTen Commission, overseen by the

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

and Outset Contemporary Art Fund, commissions new artwork from a British artist each year for ten years. The artist is tasked with creating a unique print to be shown in diplomatic buildings worldwide. The commission is sponsored by philanthropists

Sybil Robson Orr Sybil Ann Robson Orr (born 1962) is an American film producer. She is a niece of Walmart founder Sam Walton and Helen Walton, and the founder of Robson Orr Entertainment. Early life and career Sybil Robson Orr was born in 1962 in Tulsa, Oklahom ...

and

Matthew Orr Matthew Orr is a British investor and start-up advisor living and working in the United States. Biography In 1989 Orr co-foundeKillik & Co. one of the United Kingdom's leading private client investment houses, and was its Managing Partner and ...

Year 4

Artist

Lubaina Himid Lubaina Himid (born 1954) is a British artist and curator. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire.Yinka Shonibare Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is t ...

CBE produced the print ‘Hibiscus and the Rose’. He was inspired by the cultural exchange between Britain and the rest of the world.

Year 2

Artist

Tacita Dean Tacita Charlotte Dean CBE, RA (born 1965) is a British / German visual artist who works primarily in film. She was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2008. S ...

produced the print ‘Foreign Policy (screenprint edition)’.

Year 1

Artist

produced the print “Still Life with Artificial Flowers’. The work depicts a glass vase inspired by his mother, who was part of the Windrush Generation.

National Portrait Gallery Annual Commission

The Outset Commission is an annual portrait produced by the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

with support from Outset Contemporary Art Fund and patron Scott Collins.

Year 2

German photographer

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photogr ...

was commissioned to produce a portrait of

Jony Ive Sir Jonathan Paul Ive (born 27 February 1967) is a British industrial and product designer, as well as businessman. Ive was the chief design officer (CDO) of Apple Inc. from 1997 until 2019 (known as senior vice principal of industrial desig ...

as he departed his role as Chief Design Officer at

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

Year 1

Iranian-born artist and filmmaker

Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat ( fa, شیرین نشاط; born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and th ...

was commissioned to produce a portrait of Nobel Prize Winner

Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai ( ur, , , pronunciation: ; born 12 July 1997), is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pak ...

The Outset Climavore Residency

Outset offers The Climavore Residency to international artists and curators, providing both studio and living accommodation to those who are engaging with a project or cultural institution in the UK. The space was designed by

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) ...

nominated artists Cooking Sections.

theVOV

An initiative from Outset and art-science collective Visualogical, theVOV was launched in 2020. theVOV describes itself as ''“a new virtual ecosystem committed to exploration and innovation in Art x Metaverse to support cultural institutions during this critical time and beyond.”''

Season One

Season One brought together 15 leading UK public galleries including virtual exhibitions of: * '14 Magnolia Doubles' by

Chris Burden Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot'' (1971), where he arranged ...

from the 2006 exhibition at the

South London Gallery The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direct ...

. *

’s first major UK retrospective from the 2018 exhibition at the

. *

Yinka Shonibare Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is t ...

CBE open air installation from the 2013 exhibition at

Yorkshire Sculpture Park The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barbar ...

. *

Lisa Brice Lisa Brice (born 1968) is a South African painter and visual artist from Cape Town. She lives in London and cites some of her influences as her experiences growing up in South Africa during a time of political upheaval, and from time spent li ...

’s

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

exhibition from 2018. * 'Parliament of Ghost' by Ibrahim Mahama’s from the 2019 exhibition at

. * A group show of female artists curated by Hikari Yokoyama with Sarabande.

References

External links

Outset Contemporary Art FundOutset / Frieze Art Fair Fund to benefit the Tate Collection

{{DEFAULTSORT:Outset Contemporary Art Fund Foundations based in the United Kingdom British art 2003 establishments in the United Kingdom