Bob and
Roberta Smith
The artwork is a network: Bob and Roberta Smith
'I am not a public artist – but I work with the public.' With these words, the artist known as Bob and Roberta Smith launched his pitch to curate what became the Art-U-Need public art project at five sites in the Thames Gateway region of Essex in 2005-06.
Bob with with artist Jane Wilbraham and architect David Bickle, with whom he collaborated on the Thames Gateway project and his work Faîtes L'Art, Pas La Guerre ('Make Art, Not War') (Hales Gallery)
'I'd associated public art with sculpture dotted about the landscape and I'd never wanted to do that,' says Bob, a London-based British artist born as Patrick Brill in 1963. 'I'm more interested in how people understand their surroundings, where they are and what they can do; how art can improve their lives and be a language for understanding the world. So a lot of the projects I've worked on have involved working with the public rather than producing things for the public. This is what I wanted to do when I was asked if I'd consider curating the Thames Gateway project.'
So instead of grand objects or monuments, Bob looked towards carefully conceived projects with and for local communities. Five artists yielded five very different approaches in the chosen locations.
Local children with Trojan Fish, Jane Wilbraham's contribution to the Purfleet One Float Carnival, part of the Thames Gateway project, curated by Bob and Roberta Smith (Hales Gallery)
In Purfleet, Jane Wilbraham's giant 'Trojan fish' toured around as the Purfleet One Float Carnival, drawing on the history of the area and its relationship to food, transport and the river. Participants handed out copies of the Purfleet Cook Book, a collection of recipes, food memories and other anecdotes produced by local people. At Rochford Reservoir, Hayley Newman's Secret Sculpture involved members of the local scuba diving club retrieving sunken pieces of a sculpture and putting them back together.
The other Thames Gateway projects included Mailika Muritu's perspex Queensway Streams, enlivening the often-disused laundry rooms of the Queensway estate tower blocks in Southend, and Andrea Mason's three-month programme of performance events in Basildon's Northlands Park Neighbourhood.
Bob in public performance, reading aloud the entire contents of Art-U-Need, his diary-based account of the Thames Gateway project (Hales Gallery)
But if Bob and Roberta Smith had a personal favourite, it was probably Lucy Harrison's Canvey Island project. The idea drew on people's memories, going back to the 1953 flood, which devastated the island and resulted in 67 deaths. A monthly walking club was established, and members produced what amounted to an alternative social history of the area, documented in a guidebook, Captivating Canvey.
Cover design of the Captivating Canvey guidebook, created by local signwriter, Bob the Brush – part of Lucy Harrison's Canvey Island project
'The locals really embraced it,' says Bob. 'There was something about the artist's personality they really liked – a chemistry that is so important in this kind of collaborative public art. It was a like a sponge soaking up what was there rather than an artist going in and sticking something there.'
Bob's own work tends to follow a similar principle. Often produced on reclaimed materials, such as old timber or boards, and using humour as a weapon in punchy or sometimes absurdist wordplay, much of it has a DIY, punk-art quality. 'Landmark sculpture depends on us being very interested in the ideas of the artist,' he says, 'but they are not necessarily any more interesting than us. They just have the nous or the culturally savvy to be able to do it … I don't really think there should be "artists". I think there should just be people making art. It should be open to anybody if they can get out of the trench of existence and do it.'
So Bob's 2005 book, published to coincide with his exhibition 'Help Build the Ruins of Democracy' at Gateshead's BALTIC centre, was entitled Make Your Own Damn Art, and his radio show on Resonance FM (Bob also performs live music, in a band known as The Ken Ardley Playboys, among others) was called Make Your Own Damn Music. His Make Your Own Xmas installation at Tate Britain in 2008, meanwhile, invited the public to participate in the Tate's 'first fully interactive Xmas tree'. Made of recycled materials assembled from within the Tate itself, it was lit by power generated from visitors pedalling bicycles.
Faîtes L'Art, Pas La Guerre ('Make Art, Not War'), a proposal for the 2009 Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square, involved a collaboration between renewable energy specialists, structural engineers and an architect (Hales Gallery)
Faîtes L'Art, Pas La Guerre ('Make Art, Not War'), which was shortlisted for the site of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, is also powered by renewable energy, this time from the wind and the sun. The power illuminates a peace sign, the work being intended as a 'gentle provocation', questioning our notions of public art and monuments. Aesthetically and in terms of content, it drew on Bob's extensive work in sign-painting and slogans.
One of Bob and Roberta Smith's hand-painted signs for the PEER 'Shop Local' project in Hoxton, London, 2006 (Transport for London)
But what Bob considers to have been perhaps his most satisfying venture into public art was the PEER Gallery 'Shop Local' project he devised in Hoxton, east London, in 2006. Involving extensive collaboration with local shopkeepers, it resulted in a series of five artworks in the form of large text signs in Hoxton Market identifying and advertising five sole-trader businesses. 'My favourite kind of public art is all about temporary interventions,' Bob says, 'not monuments to last a thousand years.'
The Long Short Story Backwards or Lnog Sroht Sroty Brawkcads: Working with a team of sign writers, Bob's contribution to the 2008-2009 Art in the Public Realm, Greenwich Peninsula initiative was an installation/performance over seven weeks – his longest ever artwork. The initiative was proposed by Big Art Project (Newham) artists/architecture group, muf.
