Peter Liversidge, performance. Image courtesy of Foreground
Synopsis
St Ursula’s E-ACT Academy is part of Bristol City Council’s Primary/Bristol series of artist commissions for primary schools commissioned as part of the Primary Capital Education Programme. As part of the development London based artist Peter Liversidge has been commissioned by Foreground to develop a new permanent artwork for the school.
No single category or definition can successfully describe Peter Liversidge’s diverse practice which includes work in almost every conceivable medium: drawing, film, performance, photography, installations, books and multiples.
The subjects of his work can seem equally diverse but all begin at the artist’s kitchen table with Liversidge sitting alone writing proposals on an old manual typewriter – ideas for potential performances and artworks conceived of in response to different places. Some of these proposals are realised, many are not, but all are united by an underlying streak of dark, absurdist humour and a gently persistent questioning of the world around us.
Commissioned by Foreground as part of Bristol City Council’s Primary Capital Programme of artist commissions for Primary schools, Peter Liversidge will make a new work for St Ursula’s E-ACT Academy in 2017.
Often generating a series of proposals for a specific place rather than a single work, Liversidge will investigate the history, physicality and community of St Ursula’s to create ideas for works that will vary from physical additions to the school to performances and actions for the school community to enact. Liversidge is particularly interested in the structures and rituals of the school calendar and will draw directly on these and collaboration with the pupils in formulating his proposals.
A group of Liversidge’s proposals will be realized by Foreground for the school in 2017, but Liversidge’s Proposals for St Ursula’s will form an ongoing set of plans for artworks that the school can realise over an extended period, weaving art into the everyday environment of the school for years to come.
This project has been commissioned and funded by Bristol City Council. The work will be permanently housed at St Ursula’s E-ACT Academy, Bristol.
This project has been made possible through funding from Bristol City Council as part of the Primary Capital Education Programme.
Liversidge has worked with a diverse range of institutions, including the Tate Gallery in 2008, the Centre d’art Santa Mónica, Barcelona, Spain in 2008, Bloomberg SPACE, London, England in 2009 and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland in 2010. He has also developed projects for the Europalia Festival in 2007, Art Basel Miami Beach in 2009 and Edinburgh’s sculpture park, Jupiter Artland, also in 2009. In 2012, Peter Liversidge began a collaboration with Low, a band from Duluth, Minnesota, which ultimately resulted in Liversidge creating a backdrop for their international tour. In 2013 the Edinburgh Art Festival commissioned Liversidge’s Flags for Edinburgh, which invited anyone in the city with a flagpole to fly a white flag bearing the text “HELLO.”
Based in Frome, Somerset, Foreground brings new art to new audiences across the South West of England. We deliver an ambitious program that spans commissioning new temporary and permanent artworks in the diverse social and physical structures of communities, consultancy and development projects that explore the connectivity between the critical, social and economic aspects of contemporary art.
St Ursula’s E-ACT Academy is a non-denominational Academy, free to all children aged between four and 11 years. It replaced the former independent school and is sponsored by E-ACT. Working in partnership with Bristol City Council E-ACT opened our Academy on the site of the former St Ursula’s School and the Academy opened at the beginning of September 2011.
The E-ACT team and the former school also worked in very close partnership with parents and it is due to their efforts and commitment that the Academy opened.
Mr Ross Moody is our Principal and Mr Stephen Luke is our Regional Education Director.
The Academy will provide 630 primary places as it grows and develops. The Academy uses the same criteria for admissions as Bristol City Council. You can read more here on our policies page, scroll down the page for specific information about St Ursula’s E-ACT Academy.
