Project Potpourri:

    Artist Collectives – A Call and Response

    In 2023 Project Potpourri called out into the void to other Collectives to come together to create an online publication. Pragya Bhargava, Svetlana Atlavina and Sally Stenton facilitated the process with support from their parent collective -Experimental Space Collective [esc] and from Dr John Wright, lecturer at Leeds University.

    Collectives pose questions to each other, sparking conversations between Collectives across the globe. It lead to the publication of an e-book entitled ‘ARTIST COLLECTIVES: CONVERSATIONS, METHODS AND PRACTICES’.

    The aim of the project is to illuminate vital art activity that is below the institutional radar and to interrogate and celebrate collective art practices. The project is exploring what it means to be a Collective in these current times.

    For more information about the project email:

    potpourriopencall@gmail.com

    The call was launched in 2023 and led to the involvement of 23 Collectives across the globe. In keeping with the responsive, interactive and creative energies of collective approaches the project has evolved from small beginnings into a multi-way conversation between the collectives. The collectives are diverse in their size, purposes, locations and ways of operating and the questions they are asking one another and the answers they have generously given will form the text element of the book.

    Potpourri has become an active research project that is revealing the forms that Collective approaches are taking in response to the context of our times. Ecological themes, pandemic distancing and digital means are all emerging as significant players in the impetus and shaping of Collectives approaches. The questions created by the Collectives are also acting as a kind of reflective tool that may well be useful for others.

    Participants in the project are keen to see the profile of Collectives raised and to challenge the cult of the individual that characterises the artworld. The activity that is transpiring is encouraged by the 2021 Turner Prize show which boosted the profile of Artist Collectives, and the winners, Array Collective are active players in the project.

    The open call was initiated by Experimental Space Collective [esc] which originated from an informal, online network set up in 2020, connecting artists across 5 countries.

    Project Potpourri was set up to run on a reciprocal basis with no funding stream and this has enabled it to evolve flexibly in ways that have taken it way beyond the initial expectations.