MAUD

Kaldor Public Arts Projects is the first and longest running public arts organisation in the world. Led by its visionary founder, John Kaldor AO, it has been creating ground-breaking projects in public spaces since 1969, collaborating with the likes of Gilbert & George, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long and Jeff Koons. MAUD worked with Kaldor Public Arts Projects on the visual identity for its 50th anniversary.

‘Making Art Public’ was an exhibition at Sydney’s Art Gallery of NSW showcasing 34 ephemeral projects, reimagined and presented together for the first time. British artist and guest curator Michael Landy reconceptualised each work within an oversized archive box, using archives, documentation and remnant artworks to distil and reincarnate the projects in new and surprising forms.

Typically, Kaldor Public Arts Projects takes art outside buildings into the public realm. By taking art out of the gallery format, KPAP is not only placing art into public space, but also into public time, which flows, fleets and fades. This act truly situates the art in the public; it is the ultimate public gesture and it has had a profound impact on Australians’ experience of contemporary art.

The importance of ‘time and place’ led us to explore the vernacular of maps and calendars. In maps we parameterise public space using a grid — the grid aids the way we navigate place. This is also true for calendars, where we also use a grid to navigate time. The grid became a supporting and navigational device for both time and place — which extends to the way the event was navigated.

We kept the event communications monotoned, to allow the colour and richness to come from the artworks, and the Dada Grotesk typeface is based on the Aurora typeface, originally found in a 1918 issue of Dada Paris magazine. A nod to an archival past, it felt appropriate for Landy’s archival approach to the exhibition.

The microsite component has been a significant touch point for the business, and we have continued to work on various art projects for the organisation, including the Asad Raza exhibition, ‘Absorption’, as well as the ‘All Schools Should be Art Schools’ seminar, hosted by KPAP at UNSW Art and Design.