Sculpture and the contested ground of public and private space

Through applied practice and historical research, this studio-led doctoral project seeks to identify the intrinsic differences and mutual interdependencies of private and public art.  By analysing the tensions between the rigid constraints of sculpture in the public sphere and the aesthetic flexibility and freedom of the private studio - this research shows how sculpture creates spaces for innovation and reflection in complex and contested urban sites.  In this context art has the potential to act as a conduit between individuals and their community, as a material site of social communication across time and place in which ancient antecedents of the sacred and profane remain, to this day, detectable and relevant.   <br><br>The research follows a studio process-driven framework, narrating how I have negotiated the contested ground of public and private space. It follows the design and production of specific artworks for both domains, with each process analysed in the five chapters of the dissertation. Starting with a small sculptural work depicting an event in social history, my findings on context and the social, material fabric of the city, lead in the next chapter to the development and completion of a major site-specific, public sculptural relief.  Designed to commemorate the personal and public social achievement of those who engaged with the site, it is also representative of wider social contexts. The social complexities of relations between local use of the site and the broader historical context were explored in a public work that I examine from its design and commission, through to its completion.  <br><br>From the models used for this larger public work, questions arose concerning art-based solutions to figural representation at key intersections of everyday exchanges between the individual and society. These were explored in an extended series of personal, and experimental figurative sketch models.  In many ways, the intimacy of these maquettes, as well as research on votive practices, became fundamental to the design for a final major commission for Cabrini Hospital, commemorating St Frances Xavier Cabrini, in which the `contested ground' was the sense of sacred and the body, in both the public and private realms.  <br><br>Finally, the research takes a wider perspective through comparative analysis of two contemporary public sculptures in urban contexts: Callum Morton's Monument Park of 2015, and Gillian Wearing's Statue of Dame Millicent Fawcett, 2018. These large-scale works are analysed in relation to research for my own small studio works and to a number of small scaled works by the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss Suddenly This Overview, completed between 1981-2012<br><br>This research has revealed that the ground of contestation between private and public domains is not simply an actual, material, and spatial one, but also a complex socio-political domain.  I position art as an intermediary in this field of production and social meaning as a process which not only simply reveals the contested ground of sculpture but also requires negotiation within it.  This innovative perspective provides a significant contribution to art in the contemporary field, and particularly to the potential of sculpture and its contribution to urban life.