I’m giving a paper at a Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art study day on 12 June 2025.

THE PALM TREE IS A PERSON: Public Art and City Narratives

The whispers, stories, proclamations and actions that coalesce around public artworks render them both vulnerable and powerful. These works can become agitators, signifiers and expressions of a place, aiding in the construction of a wildly unpredictable city-wide narrative. Taking two sculptures by Joanna Rajkowska and Olu Oguibe from her Archive of Destruction, Jes will consider ways that artworks can challenge or yield to authority, accumulate and communicate meaning, be reimagined in new forms, and become a hot-wire for conversations around social, political and environmental issues.

The event is part of the public programme for a major exhibition at MIMA — The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (pictured above).