Artangel is a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

-based arts

ARts

aRts, which stands for analog Real time synthesizer, is an audio framework that is no longer under development. It is best known for previously being used in KDE to simulate an analog synthesizer....

 organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took

Roger Took

Roger F. Took is an art historian, museum curator, author and convicted child sex offender who has lived in London, Ireland, and Russia. In the course of his career, he ran several museums in England, was a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and a former director of the Barbican Art Gallery....

. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web. Notable past works include the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

-winning House by Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....

 (1993), Break Down by Michael Landy

Michael Landy

Michael Landy RA is one of the Young British Artists . He is best known for the performance piece installation Break Down , in which he destroyed all his possessions, and for the Art Bin project at the South London Gallery. On 29 May 2008 Landy was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in...

 (2001) and Seizure by Roger Hiorns

Roger Hiorns

Roger Hiorns is a British artist. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2009.Hiorns was born in Birmingham. He attended the Bournville College of Art from 1991 to 1993, and Goldsmiths College in London from 1993 to 1996. He lives in London....

 (2008–2010), also nominated for the Turner Prize in 2009.

A 2002 article in The Daily Telegraph described the organisation as creating "art that operates by ambush, rather than asking you to pay up before you see it" , while a 2007 profile in The Observer noted that "Artangel has worked with exceptional artists to produce some of the most resonant works of our time, in some very unusual places". These have included a condemned council flat (Seizure, 2008–2010), a former postal sorting office (Küba, 2005), a vacated general plumbing store (An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty, 2002) and the former Oxford Street branch of the C&A

C&A

C&A is an international chain of fashion retail clothing stores, with its European head offices in Vilvoorde , Belgium and Düsseldorf, Germany...

 department store (Break Down, 2001).

Ongoing projects

While many of Artangel's projects are intrinsically temporary, certain works have a longer-term remit.

1 January 2000 saw the launch of Jem Finer

Jem Finer

Jem Finer is an English musician, artist and composer. He was one of the founding members of The Pogues.-Life and career:...

's Longplayer

Longplayer

"Longplayer" is a piece of music that is designed to last for one thousand years. It started to play on 1 January 2000, and if all goes as planned, will continue without repetition until 31 December 2999, at which point it will restart....

, a musical composition which will continue playing until the end of the year 2999. Longplayer can be heard via an online stream, at listening posts internationally and at occasional live performances.

In 2007, a former municipal library building in the Icelandic town of Stykkishólmur

Stykkishólmur

Stykkishólmur is a town and municipality situated in the western part of Iceland, to the north of the Snæfellsnes peninsula.With its 1,100 inhabitants, it is a center of services and commerce for the area. Most of the people make their living from fishing and tourism. A ferry called Baldur goes...

 was transformed into VATNASAFN/Library of Water, a project by Roni Horn

Roni Horn

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. Horn's oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography, language, and site-specific installation. The granddaughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York and lives and works in New York...

 that includes an archive of glacial water and a selection of weather 'reports' by residents of Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

. It operates as a community space and is host to a writers' residency programme.

Janet Cardiff's East London audio walk The Missing Voice (Case Study B) (1999) is still available as a download from the Artangel website.

Sukdhev Sandhu's 2005 commission Night Haunts, an exploration of London during night-time, is available as a standalone website, as is Melanie Gilligan's 2008 Artangel Interaction project Crisis in the Credit System.

Several other works, such as Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is an English photographer and artist who is best known for his photobook Ray's A Laugh which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily-tattooed mother, Liz.-Career:...

's Fishtank (1998), Paul Pfeiffer's The Saints (2007) and Charles LeDray

Charles LeDray

Charles LeDray is an American sculptor. He was born in Seattle in 1960. He currently lives and works in New York.-Early life:As a child Charles LeDray learned how to sew — a skill, along with carving and ceramic making, which would later define his work...

's Mens Suits (2009), continue to be exhibited internationally.

Ilya

Ilya Kabakov

Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...

 and Emilia Kabakov's 1998 work The Palace of Projects resides permanently at a former salt store in the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex

Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex

The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex is a large former industrial site in the city of Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany...

 in Essen

Essen

- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Notable patrons as special angels include Carolyn Dailey

Carolyn Dailey

Carolyn Dailey is an entertainment and media executive who in 2011 founded Dailey Communications, which offers bespoke strategic advice on the launch of new creative sector ventures and new communications and branding initiatives for london-based and international companies and...

.

Artangel Interaction

Interaction is a department within Artangel dedicated to collaborative projects which involve specific communities in their creative process. Projects include Smother (2009) by Sarah Cole and young parents from the Coram foundation and Did You Kiss the Foot that Kicked You? by Ruth Ewan and buskers from across London. Rachel Anderson has been Head of Interaction since 2007.

Artangel Commissions, 1992 - 2010

• 1992 Stephan Balkenhol, Head of a Man / Figure on a Buoy
• 1992 Juan MuNoz, Untitled (Monument)
• 1992 Michael Clark, Mmm...
• 1992 Hans-Peter Kuhn, Five Floors
• 1992 Helen Chadwick / David Wojnarowicz, Mundo Positive
• 1993 Melanie Counsell, Coronet Cinema
• 1993 Bethan Huws / The Bistritsa Babi, Work for the North Sea
• 1993 Rachel Whiteread, House
• 1994 Graeme Miller / Mary Lemley, Listening Ground, Lost Acres
• 1995 Tatsuo Miyajima, Running Time / Clear Zero
• 1995 Brian Eno / Laurie Anderson, Self Storage
• 1995 Matthew Barney, Cremaster 4
• 1995 Robert Wilson / Hans-Peter Kuhn, H.G.
• 1996 Gabriel Orozco, Empty Club
• 1997 Dana Caspersen / William Forsythe / Joel Ryan, Tight Roaring Circle
• 1997 Neil Bartlett, The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin
  The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin
  The Seven Sacraments of Nicolas Poussin is a play by Neil Bartlett inspired by the Seven Sacraments series of paintings by Nicolas Poussin. It was commissioned in 1997 by Artangel....
  
  
• 1997 Gavin Bryars / Juan MuNoz, A Man in a Room, Gambling
• 1997 Alain Platel / Arne Sierens, Bernadetje
• 1998 Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Palace of Projects
• 1998 Neil Bartlett / Nicolas Bloomfield / Leah Hausman, Seven Sacraments
• 1998 Scanner, Surface Noise
• 1998 Augusto Boal, The Art of Legislation
• 1998 Richard Billingham, Fishtank
• 1999 John Berger / Simon McBurney, The Vertical Line
• 1999 Douglas Gordon, Feature Film
• 1999 Rachel Lichtenstein / Iain Sinclair, Rodinsky’s Whitechapel
• 1999 Janet Cardiff, The Missing Voice (Case Study B)
• 1999 Deborah Bull / Gill Clarke / Siobhan Davies, 13 Different Keys
• 2000 Jem Finer, Longplayer
• 2000 Susan Hiller, Witness
• 2000 Tony Oursler, The Influence Machine
• 2001 Michael Landy, Break Down
• 2001 Alain Platel and The Shout / Sophie Fiennes, Because I Sing
• 2001 Jeremy Deller / Mike Figgis, The Battle of Orgreave
• 2002 Atom Egoyan, Steenbeckett
• 2002 Richard Wentworth, An Area of Outstanding Unnatural Beauty
• 2002 Steve McQueen, Caribs’ Leap / Western Deep
• 2002 Shoja Azari / Sussan Deyhim / Ghasem Ebrahimian / Shirin Neshat, The Logic of the Birds
• 2002 Matthew Barney, The Cremaster Cycle screening / Cremaster Field
• 2003 Giya Kancheli, Imber
• 2003 Cameron Jamie Kranky Klaus / BB / Spook House
• 2003 Donald Urquhart/Chris Robson, Noel Noir
• 2003 David Blandy, Backslang
• 2004 Gregor Schneider, Die Familie Schneider
• 2005 Kutlug Ataman, Küba
• 2005 Wendy Ewald, Towards A Promised Land
• 2005-06 Various, Nights of London
• 2005 Francis Alÿs, Seven Walks
• 2007 Roni Horn, VATNASAFN / Library of Water
• 2007 Ruth Ewan, Did You Kiss the Foot that Kicked You?
• 2007 Penny Woolcock, Exodus
• 2007 Paul Pfeiffer, The Saints
• 2008 Various, TAZ
• 2008 Catherine Yass, High Wire
• 2008 Heiner Goebbels, Stifter's Dinge
• 2008 Roger Hiorns, Seizure
• 2008 Melanie Gilligan, Crisis in the Credit System
• 2009 Alan Kane, Life Class: Today's Nude
• 2009 Charles LeDray, Mens Suits
• 2009 Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, The Museum of Non Participation
• 2010 Oreet Ashery, Staying: Dream, Bin, Soft Stud and Other Stories
• 2010 Clio Barnard, The Arbor
• 2010 Judith Clark and Adam Phillips, The Concise Dictionary of Dress
• 2010 Sarah Cole and Coram young parents, Smother
• 2010 Mike Kelley, Mobile Homestead

External links

• Official Artangel website