Artists propose to tattoo Bristol 'FOREVER'

Under the moniker BC System, Royal College of Art graduate, Jack Brindley (BNC 2012) and fellow artist Lucas Clayton will be offering their services as public art providers over the next two months with a cumulative series of public art proposals for the city of Bristol. Their first proposition is to gift a permanent tattoo to Bristol residents over the opening weekend agreeing to be inscribed with the word ‘Forever’.

This, and additional provocative proposals from the artists will be announced over an eight-week period, beginning Friday 13 September. Bespoke noticeboards will pop up at six locations around the city centre on which proposals for new public artworks will be posted weekly for the two-month duration of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition. The only contact information will be a telephone number will give the public a chance to speak directly to BC System.

The project has been commissioned to coincide with the opening weekend of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition, organised in Bristol by Spike Island and incorporating an additional venue at 8 Millennium Promenade, Harbourside.

BC System were selected to undertake this project for New Situationists: a new programme of commissions from Situations encouraging emerging artists to experiment and test out ideas in the public realm and to encourage thinking on where public art belongs, when and where it might take place. The proposal was chosen from over 50 applications by previous New Contemporaries artists since 2010 to produce a work to coincide with the opening of this year’s exhibition.

Commenting on why Situations launched the New Situationists project, organisation Director Claire Doherty says: "The face of public art is changing. It is a variety of forms and approaches, but in the collective imagination, public art is still thought of as a static, permanent public sculpture. We wanted to work with a new wave of artists and provoke people to reconsider what public art could be, how long it might last and how artists are shaping the world around us."