The two co-directors of Artangel, the British public art commissioning organisation, are to step down after thirty years.
Under the steerage of James Lingwood and Michael Morris, Artangel has been responsible for 125 commissions, including Rachel Whiteread’s House, in which the British artist cast the inside of an ordinary house to much tabloid sensation; Michael Landy’s Breakdown, in which the artist destroyed all his belongings; Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, an ambitious reenactment of a key date in the 1980s miners’ strike; Gregor Schneider’s Die Familie Schneider, in which the German artist took over two identical houses in East London for an intimate, and creepy, one-to-one theatrical event; Clio Barnard’s ‘genre-busting’ documentary film The Arbor (2010); and Roger Hiorns’s Seizure, in which the artist covered an abandoned south London house with blue copper sulphate crystals.
Recent projects include Steve McQueen’s Year 3, a nationwide billboard project featuring class photographs of British schoolchildren, and Mobile Homestead, one of Mike Kelley’s last projects. Unfinished at the time of the artist’s death, the recreation of the American artist’s childhood home – fixed up on wheels – toured the US.
In a statement Lingwood and Morris said: ‘It’s been a rollercoaster ride, without always knowing when the track is about to loop. Working like this demands great faith from artists, angels, our staff and board, funders, and friends too. Without their belief, Artangel could not have thrived over the past three decades and our most memorable projects would never have seen the light of day. We’ll be stepping off the rollercoaster at the end of 2022. Artangel will move forward, imagined afresh under new leadership. We’re excited to see what happens next.’
Artangel was founded in 1985 by the later disgraced curator Roger Took, who died in 2011, with Lingwood and Morris taking over in 1991. The pair worked at the Institute of Contemporary Arts together in the late 1980s, but have known each other far longer, having been at boarding school and Oxford University together.
Recruitment has now begun for a replacement. The organisation receives £852,333 annual funding from Arts Council England.
