Call for responses to 100th anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain

Fountain17 is a collaboration between Art and Industry; between Ideal Standard (UK), Hull School of Art and Design and the arts community in Hull. We are celebrating the dual anniversaries of Duchamp’s Fountain (100 years) and Armitage Shanks (200 years) in 2017, when Hull is City of Culture. Armitage Shanks is owned by Ideal Standard who have been an employer in Hull for over 100 years.

Marcel Duchamp suggested that the making of art is a relational event involving artists and viewer; he completed his 1957 lecture, The Creative Act with the following proposition: ‘All in all the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in to contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act’.

Duchamp’s critique of the authority of the author (perhaps anticipated by the signature ‘R. Mutt’) pre-empts more recent ideas about the author function and the viewer’s role in making meaning. If the viewer’s interpretative response is extended to include production then we can view Fountain as the starting point for a new set of creative responses.

To explore this coincidence of anniversaries and celebrations in 2017 we are asking artists, poets and designers to respond to Duchamp’s intervention one hundred years on. We have no preconceptions as to how producers might respond. We are interested in ideas that transform an actual urinal (provided by Armitage Shanks) as well as responses in other media.

Proposals may develop any aspect of Duchamp’s work including concept driven, process based, aesthetic, experimental and materials-led ideas. Outcomes may range from the performative, the sculptural, the photographic to functional design solutions. We also welcome proposals that respond to Duchamp’s experimental and playful use of words.

Each selected artist will be given a fee of £500 to realise/produce their idea (£250 in September 2016 and £250 on completion in January 2017). Completed works will be exhibited in a touring exhibition which we anticipate starting in Hull and travelling to Stoke, London and York.

After the exhibitions the work will be put to auction towards the end of 2017 with 50% of any proceeds realised going to the artist and 50% to charity – Bowel Cancer (the Armitage Shanks designated charity) and Hull Samaritans. Artists have the right to set a reserve price. Technical support from experts/ technicians at Ideal Standard.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal see Application process below. There will also be launch/open events in London (25th May) at The Bathroom in Clerkenwell and in Hull (4th June) at Hull School of Art and Design. These will be occasions where you can meet the team and find out more about the project. More details will be postedon the website nearer the time.