Peter Blake Launches Art Everywhere The World’s Largest Public Art Exhibition

Art Everywhere

The iconic British ‘Pop’ artist Sir Peter Blake, creator of the Beatles’ famous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, today launched Art Everywhere, the world’s largest art show, showcasing the nation’s favourite British art on tens of thousands of poster sites across the UK for two weeks from 12 – 25 August 2013.
 
Cities, towns and villages across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will become the world’s largest gallery when poster sites ranging from billboards to bus stops will become artworks on high streets, major roads, tube and train stations, supermarkets and shopping malls.
 
Sir Peter unveiled his work The Meeting or Have a Nice Day Mr Hockney on the giant outdoor billboard at Westfield London Shopping Centre to launch the project.
 
The works, which have been selected by the public from the national collection of British art, include popular favourites by artists including Holbein, Turner, Gainsborough, Constable, Millais, Lowry, Whistler, Bacon, Freud, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.  The top 10 ranges widely from two outstanding Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott and Millais’ Ophelia, to Turner’s masterpiece The Fighting Temeraire and LS Lowry popular Going to the Match. More surprising choices are Gassed by John Singer Sargent and Francis Bacon’s Head V1. The list includes 23 contemporary works.
 
Art Everywhere is a collaborative project between Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, the Art Fund, Tate, Posterscope, Vizeum, Clearchannel, CBS Outdoor, Ocean Outdoor, JC Decaux, Primesight, blippar, 101 Creative and EasyArt.
 
The selection committee for the Art Everywhere shortlist was chaired by Caroline Collier, Director, Tate National and included MariaBalshaw, Director, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries; Gus Casely-Hayford, British curator and art historian; Penelope Curtis, Director, Tate Britain; Stephen Deuchar, Director, the Art Fund; Melinda Page, Art Everywhere originator, Richard Reed, Co-founder Innocent Drinks and Art Everywhere originator; Bob and Roberta Smith, artist; Gilane Tawadros, Chief Executive, Design and Art Copyright Society (DACS). The selectors contributed their proposals to the final list that was based on aselection criteria of British artists in UK collections, representation of historic, modern and contemporary, securing copyright and availability of high res images.
 
Richard Reed is a co-founder of innocent drinks and founder of Art Everywhere, a charitable project conceived to flood the streets of the UK with art and to showcase the incredible art created by and owned by the UK.
 
The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art, helping museums to buy and show great art for everyone to enjoy. Over the past 5 years it has given £24m to help over 200 museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections, from ancient sculpture and treasure hoards to Old Master paintings and contemporary commissions. It also supports a range of programmes which promote museums and their collections to wider audiences, including the national tour of the ARTIST ROOMS collection, the Art Fund Prize which rewards and celebrates Museum of the Year, and its Art Guide, a pioneering smartphone app offering the most comprehensive guide to seeing art across the UK. It is independently funded, the majority of its income coming from 95,000 memberswho, through the National Art Pass, enjoy free entry to over 220 hundred museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibition
 
Tate holds the national collection of British art from 1500 to the present day and international modern and contemporary art. Tate’s purpose is to promote public understanding and enjoyment of British, modern and contemporary art.

Art is Everywhere has also polled the public to find out which artist’s works are the most popular in Britain. The selection has fuelled much speculation and the winners are in and published here for the first time.

Art Everywhere: The Public’s Choice
 
1.    John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888, Tate
2.    Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-2, Tate
3.    Francis Bacon, Head V1, 1949, Arts Council Collection
4.    John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1919, Imperial War Museum
5.    Lucian Freud, Man’s Head (Self Portrait I), 1963, Whitworth Art Gallery
6.    JMW Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839, The National Gallery
7.    Alfred Wallis, Five Ships, Mount’s Bay c 1928, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
8.    L. S. Lowry, Going to the Match, 1953, Professional Footballers’ Association
9.    James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, c.1872-5, Tate
10. Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991, Tate
11. Patrick Caulfield, After Lunch, 1975, Tate
12. Lucian Freud, Girl with a Kitten, 1947, Tate
13. Sir Stanley Spencer, Neighbours, 1936, Stanley Spencer
14. Peter Blake, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967, V&A
15. Tacita Dean, Majesty, 2006, Tate
16. Bob and Roberta Smith, Make Art Not War, 1997, Tate
17. Edward Burra, The Snack Bar, 1930, Tate
18. Peter Doig, Blotter, 1993, Walker Art Gallery
19. Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors, 1533, The National Gallery
20. Sir Henry Raeburn, Revd Dr Robert Walker (1755 – 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch, c.1795, National Galleries of Scotland
21. John William Waterhouse (RA), Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, Manchester City Galleries
22. George Frederic Watts and assistants, Hope, 1886, Tate
23. Barbara Hepworth, Pelagos, 1946, Tate
24. George Stubbs, Whistlejacket, c. 1762, The National Gallery
25. Chris Ofili, No Woman, No Cry, 1998, Tate
26. Hew Locke, Jungle Queen II, 2003, The New Art Gallery Walsall
27. Zarina Bhimji, Out of Blue, 2002, Tate
28. Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in the Place of the Sun, exhibited 1766,Derby Museum and Art Gallery
29. John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1831, Tate
30. Samuel Palmer, In a Shoreham Garden, c. 1830, Victoria and Albert Museum
31. Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England, 1852-5, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
32. Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, 1855-64, Tate
33. Tracey Emin, For You, 2008, Aberdeen Art Gallery
34. Bridget Riley, Blaze 4, 1964, Courtesy of Tate
35. Rose Finn-Kelcey, The Restless Image – A Discrepancy Between the Felt Position and the Seen Position. Self Portrait, 1975, Tate
36. Sarah Lucas, Self Portrait with Fried Eggs,1996, Tate
37. Howard Hodgkin, Rain, 1984-9, Tate
38. Paul Nash, Landscape of the vernal equinox, 1943, The Royal Collection
39. Attributed to Allan Ramsay, Portrait of an African, c.1757-60, Royal Albert Memorial Museum
40. John Martin, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, 1852, Laing Art Gallery
41. Sonia Boyce, She Aint Holding Them Up, She’s Holding On (Some English Rose), 1986, mima Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
42. Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs Andrews, c. 1750, The National Gallery
43. Attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, Elizabeth I (1533–1603): The Pelican Portrait, Walker Art Gallery
44. William Holman Hunt, Our English Coasts, 1852 (‘Strayed Sheep’), 1852, Tate
45. Mona Hatoum, Performance Still, 1985, printed 1995, Tate
46. Michael Craig-Martin, Inhale (Yellow), 2002, Manchester Art Gallery
47. David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967, Tate
48. Damien Hirst, Pardaxin, 2004, Government Art Collection
49. Winifred Margaret Knights, Portrait of a Young Woman 1920, UCL Art Museum
50. William Hogarth, Heads of Six of Hogarth’s Servants, c. 1750-5, Tate
51. J.Digby Curtis, Robert Bakewell’s Two Pounder, 1790, The Royal Agricultural University
52. Anish Kapoor, As if to Celebrate, I Discovered a Mountain Blooming with Red Flowers, 1981, Tate
53. Humphrey Ocean, Lord Volvo and his Estate, 1982, WAVE: Wolverhampton Art Gallery
54. Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, Tate
55. Peter Blake, ‘The Meeting’ or ‘Have a Nice Day, Mr Hockney’, 1981-3, Tate
56. Martin Creed, Work No. 975: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, 2008, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
57. Gary Hume, Water Painting, 1999, Tate

Photo: © P C Robinson Artlyst all rights reserved
 

Tags