"This book offers a pause, a juncture between the artists completing the programme and moving forward to continue making, exhibiting, performing and advocating. We must listen closely, absorb what they are saying at this moment and follow them into the unknown."
Aggregate 2022 is a publication that reflects upon two years of activity from the second cohort of artists participating in the Freelands Artist Programme (2019-21).
Launched in 2018, Freelands Artist Programme is a landmark initiative to support emerging artists across the UK. Its aim is to nurture emerging artists’ practices by fostering long-term relationships and collaborations with arts organisations, helping to bolster regional arts ecosystems. Four organisations across the UK – g39, Cardiff; PS2, Belfast; Site Gallery, Sheffield; and Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh – care for five artists each, working with them for two years.
Published alongside the exhibition taking place in Freelands Foundation London gallery space, Aggregate 2022 brings together the practices of 21 artists, with a breadth of ideas and approaches. Each artist was invited to put forward an author to write about their distinctive practices, and the book carries a multiplicity of voices: artists, activists academics, curators and writers.
In addition, the central section of Aggregate 2022 gathers dialogues taken from the Freelands Artist Programme symposium in 2020. In ‘On Doughnuts and the 10%’, George Vasey reflects on his own experience as an independent curator and ‘failed artist’. A transcript of a talk between artist Jacqueline Donachie and Alistair Hudson, Director of The Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery investigates social practice today. Alongside this, the four partners in the programme reflect on their roles, finding common ground across the diverse ecosystems in Belfast, Sheffield, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and examining what it means to support and facilitate contemporary artistic production.
Artists in the publication are Becca + Clare, Brown&Brí, Jane Butler, James Clarkson, Mitch Conlon, Freya Dooley, Rebecca Gould, Maud Haya-Baviera, Jenny Hogarth, Rhiannon Lowe, Victoria, Lucas, Jasmin Märker, Will Roberts, Conor Rogers, Sarah Rose, Rae-Yen Song, Eothen Stearn, Neasa Terry, Thomas Wells, Joanna Whittle, and Mona Yoo.
Published in 2022, 288 pages, designed by Kristin Metho
