England
Open Space is an organisation that supports emerging creative practices and promotes dialogue in the arts through an annual programme of projects in unexpected spaces. Building on its work over the past four years as a platform for experimental pop-up exhibitions and commissions, Open Space Contemporary relaunched as Open Space in 2019, featuring its first annual programme of ambitious multidisciplinary projects. This programme, which marks a new chapter in the organisation’s life, consists of four annually recurring projects informed by a concept that reflects on, and responds to, critical contemporary issues. Each project highlights and supports the work of practitioners from varied creative backgrounds and experiments with different sensory and conceptual spaces for arts programming, including digital, discursive, residential, and culinary.
Its inaugural 2019 programme is led by the idea of Space without spaces. This theme playfully references the model of Open Space: an arts organisation operating without a fixed exhibition space, choosing instead to explore multiple spaces. Simultaneously, the programme also addresses a pressing contemporary issue: in a climate of rapidly encroaching borders and increasing privatisation in the arts and in public life more widely, what might it mean to exist in a space without spaces?
Above: Adventitious Encounters, 2018, Whiteleys Sky Roof, install view.