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muf art projects critically intersect at the point between desire and experience, object and idea, how we live and who we are. In each situation the creative process is the mechanism to involve and inspire the potential viewer as participant or co-author of the work. Projects include temporary and permanent interventions in a range of media; video projections, lighting projects, interventions, bespoke street furniture and signage in urban and rural locations. muf have worked with formal and informal groups that include pensioners, refugees, youth groups and young children. |
The Big Art Project
The Big Art Project is a collaboration between Channel Four and the Arts Council exploring the social, political and aesthetic relevance of 21st Century public art.
muf are commissioned to brief develop a proposal for the Beckton Alp, a post-industrial toxic slag heap previously renovated as an artificial ski slope in the east end of London.
The site is a feral landscape that borders the Thames and was once the site of the largest chemical plant in Europe. The feral landscape as a typology is rich in the marginal human and non-human activity that it can support, as such it is already resonant with possibilities that are excluded. |
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Chatterton on the Beach muf were commissioned as artists on Bristol's Urban Beach - a temporary city centre space initiated by Demos for the summer of 2007.
muf conceputalised the beach as a catalyst space, a place where seemingly exclusive territories could be made permeable to one another. The resulting project, Chatterton on the Beach is a piece of creative research that investigates what it takes to bring the heritage of the 18th century boy poet, Thomas Chatterton, to the territory of contemporary childhood, framed within the rich heritage of boat building still present on the site.
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Talking Heads An immersive sound piece of talking heads commissioned by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 6 busts from the museum's collection (including the heads of Einstein, Conrad and Wellington) sit around a table of tromped l'oeil cloth depicting the setting of a half-eaten meal (all tableware sourced from the museum's own collection). Visitors sit next to these busts and eavesdrop on 3 separate conversations scripted and re-interpreted by actors in local accents. The conversations relate both to the personal and larger social, political and historical context in which the busts were produced and are based on an extended period of research conducted with academic experts.
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Dale Primary School muf are working strategically to research and test models for creative learning environments by making temporary experiential spaces and interventions within the school. The evaluation of each intervention is resolved in a proposal for permanent changes to the fabric or spatial use of the school. To date these proposals include a design to remodel the school entrance and sign board, to be implemented in May 2007, a design brief for a dedicated outside space for staff, a renovation of the reception play space and a design brief for an integrated workstation storage unit to defeat clutter. 
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Roots and Wings A project to initiate the design process for a public park to ensure it is socially and ecologically relevant to the existing neighbourhood. The project is part of the regeneration of a derelict landscape on the outskirts of Liverpool.
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Your Place or Mine muf worked with Whitstable Junior School and Creative Partnerships Project to establish through participative working with students and staff a master plan design for the school playground. The scheme, which is currently on site, creates two mirror image timber structures along the boundary between the games and quiet areas of the playground to act as auditoria or performance space with areas to hangout in the under croft.
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Your Dream Today, My Dream Tomorrow
An ongoing project with local constituencies to research and reinvent relationships to public space. The project is situated in relation to the current town centre development. The first project with young people culminated in the creation of large-scale images for the site hoarding opposite the Town Hall. muf worked in collaboration with students from the local Broadway Performing Arts College to create photographic images that visualise their fantasies for the spaces that surround them. The project was commissioned by Barking and Dagenham Council and the developers Urban Catalyst. |
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Woking
A project exploring anxieties relating to contemporary art practise and the perceived eclipse of its representational traditions. Working with the Moorcrofts Art Class and artist Verity-Jane Keefe objects from the museum were recreated through precise technical drawings and material from local charity shops (material that ordinarily fails to meet the criteria of an official museum collection). Both drawings and objects were exhibited in the local library. | |||
 A Horses Tail
Client Countryside Agency Local Heritage Initiative 2003-2004 While the Tilbury community garden was under construction, a local history project was initiated and run by muf with local children. The project investigated the cultural and emotional claims to the landscape around Tilbury expressed by the semi-legal practice of grazing ponies. Project culminates in launch of the horses tale website.
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Life/Work
A participative art work at the edge of an area marked for development in Radford (including a disused canal side power station to be renovated as live/work apartments and a bridge over the canal to create a new route into the town centre). The project culminated in an event set up as an act of social engineering to provide a platform for discussion for future development as a shared boat trip along the canal where the soon-to-be-developed but still-derelict buildings were animated by light, projections, performance and a narrative constructed from interviews with local trade unionists recreating the landscape as a new mythologised environment. |
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Pumpkin Logic
A temporary intervention at the Urban Summit. 200 carved pumpkin lanterns situated in the convention square with two large screen projections of animated pumpkin lanterns discussing the role of the arts in regeneration. The pumpkin dialogue was constructed from previous conversations with a range of practitioners delivering/experiencing regeneration projects. |
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 Transformer
A project with local children and residents from a gypsy site to research and create an interactive permanent installation that utilizes alternative technology to create a pedal powered fountain and lights. |
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The Macguffin
A temporary performance and light installation at the Beaufoy School Building Vauxhall. |
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Seducer
A light work for Boscombe Pier. The project was developed through workshops with local groups. |
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On the Buses
Action research to test the relevance of art to people who may be oblivious of its presence. |
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Extinguished but Distinguished
Tommy Cooper at the Minories: a temporary video projection in Colchester of dead celebrity look-alikes identified through a classified advert in the local newspaper. |
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Ride
A process based project with BMX riders and skaters to create a surface design for a skate park. |
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