The term installation art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific place or for a temporary period of time. This roundtable is seeking to address questions around where installation art sits within an increasingly immersive, experience-driven cultural sector, and whether, and if so how, it might hold the key to connecting audiences to histories through storytelling, lived experience and cultural heritage.

Chaired by Jon Weston (Curator, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art) and with panelists including artist Simeon Barclay, Persilia Caton (Collections Curator, Artangel), Tim Dixon (Deputy Director, Matt’s Gallery) and Alona Pardo (Head of Programme, Arts Council Collection), among other themes, the roundtable will consider how experimentation, ambition and interrogation be maintained against a backdrop of arts funding cuts and rising costs such as storage, transport and materials — and how, given this, public institutions, commercial galleries, commissioners and funding bodies can continue to support ambitious installation art. Moreover, are artists being fairly paid for delivering ambitious installation art commissions both institutionally and within the public realm? And where does installation art sit within the current art market?