Sculpture Placement Group was founded in Glasgow in 2019, we champion sustainability in the visual arts and create new ways to support artists economically. Our Club brings you on this journey with us and gives you two sculptures from leading contemporary artists.
SPG Club gives its subscribers a unique experience. Members get an insight into how the artworks are made and access to the artists themselves. As an annual member you’ll get two new sculptures commissioned by SPG, and have access to exclusive content about the artist.
As a member you'll get ...
- Two artworks from leading contemporary artists.
- Membership model means art production is made more affordable for you.
- £45 per month, 12 month contract.
- Exclusive access to member events throughout the year.
- An authentication certificate for each of your sculptures.
- Domestically scaled and delivered directly to you.
SPG Club 2022 - Artists
Each year Sculpture Placement Group commission two artists to create domestically scaled sculptures exclusively for its SPG Club members. SPG work with leading contemporary artists, artists that we believe to be making art that investigates crucial themes and pushes the sculpture medium into new territory. These artworks are then produced in limited runs and given to SPG Club members.
Joseph Buckley
The first artist that will be producing work for SPG Club in 2022 is Joseph Buckley. Joseph is originally from Leeds, but now lives and works in New York.
Buckley is interested in the potential of sculpture as a physical thing occupying physical space, its actual presence in front of the viewer demanding to be confronted. The visual and conceptual language of science fiction and fantasy operate as a lens to speak about contemporary class and race politics. Like speculative phantoms of the future that are all too close to our social reality.
Joseph Buckley’s work is informed by grief and postcolonialism, manifesting in a range of forms including sculpture, video, and writing. Using a myriad of techniques, these themes are alternately reified or obfuscated–mobilized to rhyme or repel each other. Central to his work is the use of “non-materials” (ideas, processes, people), manipulated in manners that mimic the archetypal languages and processes of sculpture. This lends itself to an ongoing critique and consideration of the mechanics of objectification, and the obverse of objectification: dehumanization.
Selected works
photo credit Mischa Haller
plagues, fires, floods
2021
cast plastic, formica, mdf
97 x 25 x 76 inches
Joseph Buckley’s work brings a formidable knowledge of science fictional premises, traumas and catastrophes into uncomfortable proximity with contemporary class and race politics. Through a critical sculptural practise, he foregrounds the violence of fabrication as an analogue for the social reproduction of inequality, bigotry, and ecological collapse. His phalanx of disturbingly hollow martial entities plagues, fires, floods (2021), draws upon the vernacular of private security companies, riot cops, and classical armouries to create a composite image of a future enemy whose ancestors are, horrifically, already in our midst.
Orcish Forming
2021
32 x 42 x 72 inches
cast plastic, acrylic paint, levelling hardware
Buckley promotes the Orc from an evil role to that of surplus labor employed as modular furniture components, perniciously extra.
photo credit Charlott Markus
photo credit Hesse Flatow
George Slaying Dragon
2020
cast plastic
10 x 8.5 x 7.5 inches
George Slaying Dragon recasts England’s patron saint as an enslaved individual, rebelling, and in the process of defeating a snarling white dragon representing perhaps, the capitalist slaver, sending it to its death beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Sara Barker
Sara Barker is a sculptor living and working in Glasgow, her delicate glass and metal works create meaning by shuttling between the mediums of sculpture, painting and drawing.
Her fascination with the physicality of art is evident in her approach to making work, Barker says “I like to stretch materials to their most poignant state where they can’t stand any longer and take on a kind of humanness”.
Barker’s more recent work has been large-scale public work, a journey which began with an outdoor sculpture for Jupiter Artland featured below. These sculptures are like a vector between the organic and industrial. The suggested physics are upended, floating above you but contouring like the movement of organic materials in space.
For SPG Club 2022, Barker will be working with a new set of parameters, creating something for the domestic space, the results are sure to be both beautiful and interesting.
Selected Works
Geographies of dust and air moving parts out of night
2015
brass and stainless steel rod, aluminium sheet, autmotive paint, perspex, spray paint
158 x 123.5 x 104 cms
Her works purposefully seem to defy gravity, part of her determination to look for "impossibility", and to push the materials as far as she can. Their delicacy and deliberate awkwardness is balanced by a strength that reflects her historical artistic heroes – Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and Matisse, her "default artist that all artists who study history of art return to for his looseness, gestural qualities and sense of colour". She also looks to contemporaries such as Hayley Tompkins and Cathy Wilkes, artists dealing with the issues of "provisionality" that she is pursuing herself.
Separation in the Evening (a celestial blossom before the yellow house)
2015
stainless steel, stainless steel rod, brass rod, paint
450 x 400 x 240 inches
A first encounter with the outdoors as a space to make art for takes a shift in perception, and a sensitive navigation of the sculptural pivots, topographical and geomantic landmarks unique to Jupiter Artland, especially because unlike a gallery environment, the landscape here is constantly evolving, plumping in summer to create flood-lit enclosures, and pockets of space, that reveal and illuminate themselves in different ways through the seasons.
The Last of Light (3 needles)
The paper-like organic planes of material which form large sections of the sculpture, were made of a bespoke composite material that combines glass-reinforced plastic (GRP), polyester resin, and scaled handmade Japanese paper. This creates the rigid curved sections of strong paintable material, which have the mottled surface and apparently delicate edges of the original craft material. I tested various materials for the panels, including Jesmonite which wasn't strong enough. In the end, I chose fibreglass because it picked up the folded details so well and allowed me to be involved in the sculpting process pre-casting.
Member Events
- Virtual studio visit with the artist.
- Online events and exclusive content.
- Podcast and writing about the artist.
- Regular information and updates
Reviews
I really like the Members' Area - it's been really helpful and interesting throughout. I love seeing the recommendations and really appreciate that there is a hub to go back to to watch missed events.
We love the first sculpture. It was a delight to open, a surprising form and it links brilliantly with the event and screening we attended, which give it an extra resonance for us.
SPG Club 2022
£45 per month
- 2 limited edition sculptures that have been exclusively commissioned for SPG Club.
- The sculptures will be created by leading contemporary artists Joseph Buckley and another artist to be announced later this month.
- The sculptures are domestically-scaled and delivered directly to your door.
- An authentication certificate for each of your sculptures.
- Artist profiles and information about and how each work was made.
- Behind the scenes access to the making of each sculpture.
- Access to live artist talks and events.
- Information and advice on how to care for and display your sculptures in your home.
- Free UK delivery.
SPG Club 2021
Andy Holden
Andy tireless practice involves sculpture, installation, painting, pop music, performance, animation and multi-screen-video. He also makes music with his band the Brubby Mitts and runs his own gallery, Ex-Baldesarre in Bedford. His work has been shown at Kettles Yard, Tate Britain, the Venice Biennale and Spike Island.
For SPG Club, Andy riffed on his animated avatar popularised in his Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape film and Structure of Feeling. The avatar has become a digital and physical composite, a vehicle to explore how we perceive and interpret the world. Five sculptural versions of this avatar were produced for SPG Club 2021 #1.
Holly Hendry
Holly’s work looks at what lies beneath the surface, often embedding waste products that don’t break down and can be rediscovered during excavation processes. Casting is central to her large site responsive sculptures. She works with a range of materials from classical sculptural materials like jesmonite and silicone, to the everyday like lipstick and soap.
Hendry’s work has been shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Biennale de Lyon, Selfridges Flagship Store and the Liverpool Biennial.
We’re very excited to see what Holly will produce on a domestic scale, as a highly skilled artist that’s often experimenting with materials, the results are sure to be exciting.
Our social impact
For every 10 subscribers we donate a sculpture to a partner charity organisation whose aims align with ours. We organise workshops, and other interactive events based on the sculptures and the process involved in making them. This is part of our wider objective to place sculptures at the centre of the wider community.
Govanhill Housing Association
Govanhill Housing Association, a community-controlled social landlord operating in Glasgow. Registered in 1974, the Association’s roots lie in Glasgow’s policy of large-scale demolitions of slum housing from the late 1950s/1960s onwards. This ushered in a new breed of housing associations – Govanhill among them. Led by local residents, these housing associations were to become renewal agents in working class communities throughout Glasgow and a shining example of people power in action.
Grampian Hospitals Art Trust
Kirktonholme Primary School
Kirktonholme Primary School is located in East Kilbride, Scotland. Teachers and pupils have a great interest in engaging with arts activities and are very pro-active in seeking out opportunities to do so. The school’s motto is inspiring for all attending the school, HEART which stands for Happiness, excellence, achievement, respect and teamwork.
About Us
Sculpture Placement Group
We’re a community interest company, working towards being leaders in sustainable practice within the visual arts. Our projects focus on making the visual arts environmentally and financially sustainable, and reaching diverse audiences by bringing art into workplaces, homes and local communities. Some of our active projects include:
SPG Loans: A flagship project that matches artworks that have been languishing in storage to new custodians from the private and public sector. Placing contemporary sculpture into different contexts and to new audiences.
SPG Club: A contemporary art subscription scheme that gives its members a chance to collect domestically-scaled artworks from leading contemporary artists. The Club allows a more crowdfunded approach to the production of contemporary art that eschews some of the cultural or economic barriers between an audience and artist.
Circular Arts Network: Integrating more sustainable practises in the creation of new artworks and other creative projects is impacted by our circular economy tool CAN. CAN allows users to share and exchange materials and resources. It finds partnerships with construction companies and extends the network of sharing to strengthen the circular economy within the creative industries.