Digital Artist for Public Art Commission, Clifton Park Museum

Rotherham Museums, Arts and Heritage would like to commission an artist as part of the Wentworth and Elsecar Great Place programme to develop a creative response to Mark Wallinger’s ‘Ghost’.

The £4,500 commission is funded as part of a Great Place Scheme, a partnership between the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), Arts Council England (ACE) and supported by Historic England. The Great Place Scheme is designed to pilot new approaches that enable cultural and community groups to work more closely together and to place heritage at the heart of communities.

The commission will focus on engagement with ‘Ghost’ – a scanachrome print on an aluminium lightbox, by Turner Prize-winning contemporary artist Mark Wallinger. This work is directly inspired by the famous painting ‘Whistlejacket’ by George Stubbs, which was originally displayed at Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham and is currently being loaned by the National Gallery to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The celebrated 18th century painting shows a famous racehorse owned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. In ‘Ghost’, Wallinger adds a narwhal tusk to a negative image of ‘Whistlejacket’, transforming the horse into a unicorn. ‘Ghost’ is currently on loan from The Kirkland Collection and is displayed in the entrance hall of Clifton Park Museum.

The project aims to reinterpret the artwork through exploring the themes of opposites and the unexpected and linking it with the other hidden stories across WE Great Place heritage sites.

For a copy of the Artist’s Brief, please contact victoria.dawes@rotherham.gov.uk

The deadline for applications is 12pm on Sunday 21st June 2020.