Arts Catalyst
Since 1994, the organisation has commissioned more than 170 artists’ projects, including major new works by the Otolith Group, Agnes Meyer Brandis, Tomás Saraceno, Aleksandra Mir, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, and Susan Schuppli.
Notable artists the organisation has commissioned include Tomas Saraceno, The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar), Critical Art Ensemble, James Acord, Laurie Anderson, Nahum, Marcel.li Antunez Roca, Lise Autogena, Brandon Ballengée, Anne Bean, Steve Beard, Andy Bichlbaum (Jacques Servin), Ansuman Biswas, Brian Catling, Oron Catts, Helen Chadwick, Gina Czarnecki, Beatriz da Costa, Adam Dant, Jan Fabre, Simon Faithfull, Jem Finer, Alec Finlay, Vadim Fishkin, Stefan Gec, Jack Klaff, Tim Knowles, Andrew Kotting, Steve Kurtz, Yuri Leiderman, Aleksandra Mir, Kira O'Reilly, Marko Peljhan, Esther Polak, Snæbjörnsdóttir | Wilson, Ashok Sukumaran, Aaron Williamson, Carey Young, Ariel Guzik In the 1990s, its commissions included Helen Chadwick's sensitive creations involving human embryos, James Acord's radioactive sculptures, Kitsou Dubois's choreography in zero gravity.
[2] An early project was Ansuman Biswas' 'CAT' in 1997, which used the quantum physics 'thought experiment' Schrödinger's Cat as a provocation to explore the nature of uncertainty and unknowing on a human level.
The artists and organisations involved in this event were PolakVanBekkum, London Fieldworks, Alec Finlay, Adam Dant, Camila Sposati and Susanne Norregard Nielsen.
The event consisted of performances, ephemeral landscape installations, poetry readings and kite-flying workshops, all of which were intended to redefine philosophical territory of the air exploring ideas about ownership rights, cartography and aerial movement.
Artists were inspired by utilitarian plans of lunar mines and military bases, the lives of astronauts such as Yuri Gagarin and early sci-fi literature such as The Man in the Moone by Francis Godwin.
Agnes Meyer-Brandis' commission for the exhibition, "Moon Goose Analogue" involved her raising eleven geese from birth, imprinting herself as goose-mother and training them to be astronauts.
Sue Corke and Hagen Betzweiser created an installation "Enter At Own Risk” in which a lone astronaut gardens a group of rocks, spraying them with their synthesised smell of the Moon, a recipe based on reports from the Apollo crew.
[21] Arts Catalyst has also curated a touring exhibition presenting some of the most innovative and progressive examples of contemporary architecture in Antarctica drawing together projects that both utilise cutting-edge technology and engineering, but have also considered aesthetics, sustainability and human needs in their ground-breaking designs for research stations.
will be artists in residence and they will run a series of events alongside the show including KOSMICA Full Moon Party[23] and Global Lunar Day.
This was a programme of workshops and walks conceived as a collective public research process in Sheffield that explored the ways in which extraction, industry and geology have shaped the relationships between humans and non-humans in the region.
Between 2021 - 2023 Arts Catalyst produced the Emergent Ecologies programme, a series of artist projects across South Yorkshire that explore how our experiences of place — from wetlands and waterways to city centre streets — and of ourselves within them, are shaped with and by other beings.
