Speaker

Polly Wright

Biography

The art of leaning: incidentality as productive distraction

Incidental Unit (IU) is the third iteration of Artist Placement Group, which was co-founded by Barbara Steveni, John Latham and others in 1966. Before her death in 2020, Steveni also helped to establish IU (2016 – ongoing) as a subsequent iteration of APG. To honour Steveni’s legacy, IU connects placement-based practitioners working with art in extra-artistic contexts (industry, government, health care and beyond). This burgeoning network is reprising Steveni’s preoccupation with ‘not knowing’ and Latham’s use of the term ‘incidental’ to enrich debates around the role and work of the artist and art’s critical and creative agency.