Since 2011, Hoodwink has commissioned artists to make work for the places where people already are. Our projects have appeared in shopping centres, leisure centres, music venues and pubs across Kent and Medway, testing what happens when contemporary art steps out of the gallery and into everyday public life.
We've always believed that art doesn't need a white cube to matter. The best site-specific work responds to a place, its people and its rhythms. Over the years, we've supported artists to take risks, experiment with context, and find audiences who might never set foot in a traditional arts venue. This archive represents more than a decade of that practice.
Public Art House: where it began
Public Art House ran from November 2011 to May 2012 and marked the first formal trial of what would become the Hoodwink commissioning philosophy. We worked with two public houses in Tunbridge Wells, partnering with Kent-based artists Jane Pitt and Shelly Goldsmith to explore what artist-led interventions could look like in spaces defined by conversation, community and the casual rhythms of social life.
Pubs are democratic spaces in their own way. People gather without needing permission or an invitation. They're woven into the fabric of a town, part of its identity and routine. For us, they offered a testing ground: could we commission work that felt native to these environments rather than imported? Could art sit comfortably alongside a pint, a quiz night, a corner conversation?
Jane Pitt and Shelly Goldsmith each brought distinct practices to the project, but both shared an interest in observation, participation and the social dimensions of place. Their work unfolded over several months, responding to the architecture, the clientele and the particular character of each pub. The projects were subtle, embedded, sometimes almost invisible until you noticed them. That was the point. We weren't interested in spectacle for its own sake, but in work that could live and breathe within the existing life of a venue.
Public Art House gave us the confidence to formalise our approach. It proved that commissioning artists for everyday public spaces wasn't just viable but necessary. It demonstrated that audiences were there, ready to engage, as long as the work respected the context and trusted them to meet it halfway.
building a commissioning practice
What began with Public Art House grew into a broader programme of site-specific commissions across Kent and the South East. We've placed artists in leisure centres during peak swimming hours, in shopping centres during the Saturday rush, in independent music venues between soundcheck and doors. Each location brings its own challenges and possibilities.
Our commissioning practice is built on a few core principles:
- We work with artists who are curious about context, not just content.
- We prioritise sites where art isn't expected, and where audiences aren't self-selecting.
- We give artists time and support to research, respond and develop work that's specific to place.
- We value work that can be encountered casually, without requiring prior knowledge or a ticket.
This approach has shaped the kind of projects we support. Some have been performative, others sculptural or installation-based. Some have lasted an afternoon; others have unfolded over weeks. What they share is a commitment to the site, an attention to the people who use it, and a willingness to work outside the usual structures of arts presentation.
what these projects have meant
For artists, working with Hoodwink has often meant stepping outside their comfort zone. Gallery-based practices have to adapt. Assumptions about how audiences encounter work have to be rethought. There's no wall text, no press release on arrival, no hushed room. The work has to hold its own in the noise and flow of public life.
Many of the artists we've commissioned have described the experience as liberating. Without the weight of the gallery context, they've found new ways to make work, new relationships with materials and duration, new conversations with people who wouldn't normally engage with contemporary art. It's a different kind of pressure, but also a different kind of freedom.
For audiences, the impact is harder to measure but no less real. We've seen curiosity, puzzlement, delight, indifference and everything in between. Not everyone stops. Not everyone engages. But for those who do, there's often a moment of recognition: that art can happen here, in this ordinary place, without ceremony or gatekeeping. That shift in expectation is as valuable as any individual artwork.
how our approach has evolved
Over time, we've refined what we ask of artists and what we ask of sites. We've learned that not every location can support every kind of practice, and that successful commissions require genuine partnership with venue managers, staff and communities. We've become better at facilitating those relationships, at negotiating the practical and conceptual challenges of working in active, non-arts spaces.
We've also become more confident in our curatorial voice. We know what we're looking for: artists who understand that site-specificity isn't just about physical space but about social space, temporal rhythms, institutional culture and local identity. We're drawn to work that's generous, attentive and unafraid of the everyday.
The projects archived here represent the foundation of that practice. They're documents of a particular moment, a particular set of experiments, and a particular belief in what public art can be when it leaves the pedestal behind and walks into the world as it is.