Running the City ― Why Public Art Matters

Leading Australian curator Felicity Fenner profiles activity-based and pop-up contemporary public art projects from Australia and around the globe. Running the City explores art projects that bring together diverse disciplines and cultures – including running, cycling, architecture, and guerilla gardening. From runners taking to the streets of Sydney’s CBD in Runscape to Work No. 850, where athletes sprinted through the corridors of Tate Britain, the book surveys recent art projects that utilise the city both as subject matter and a site for art. Participatory, temporary, and permanent community-driven art projects reveal how public space can be activated in ways that are original, subversive, fun, and unexpected. More than just site-specific public art, the art projects examined in Running the City change the way we think about and inhabit our cities.

Felicity Fenner is the Director of UNSW Galleries, at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is a founding member of the City of Sydney Public Art Advisory Panel and a curator of over 30 contemporary art exhibitions, including Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (2008), Once Removed at the 2009 Venice Biennale, Michael Nyman: CineOpera (Sydney Park Brickworks, 2011) and Running the City (2013 International Symposium of Electronic Arts).