contact details
email: chris@fremantle.org
tel: 00 44 (0)7714 203016

web site:
www.chris.fremantle.org
www.greenhousebritain.net
www.platformlondon.org
www.remembersarowiwa.com

Chris Freemantle
Photographer: John Maine

CHRIS FREMANTLE
Research Associate, On the Edge Research

Biographical Statement
Chris Fremantle is researcher, producer and fundraiser. He has been involved with On The Edge Research from the outset and has contributed to the programme, developing and managing projects, as well as co-authoring and co-presenting papers. Fremantle worked as Research Associate on the research strand of The Artist as Leader, a collaboration between On The Edge, PAL labs (http://www.pallabs.org/) and Cultural Enterprise Office (http://www.culturalenterpriseoffice.co.uk/). He was also on the steering group for the Working in Public Seminars (http://www.workinginpublicseminars.org/) and co-edited elements of the website.

Fremantle established ecoartscotland (http://ecoartscotland.net/) as a platform for research and practice. Highlighting practices, providing a bibliography and journal, and potentially acting as a vehicle for projects, ecoartscotland.net also represents information from a wide range of sources for a Scottish audience. He practices writing on his website (http://chris.fremantle.org/).

Fremantle works as a freelance producer and project manager and his recent work has included working with Ginkgo Projects (http://www.ginkgoprojects.co.uk/) developing Working Well: People and Spaces, a therapeutic design and arts strategy for the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's (NHSGGC) New South Glasgow Hospitals. He project managed the art strategies for NHSGGC's New Stobhill and Victoria Hospitals working with artist teams led by Thomas A Clark (http://thomasaclarkblog.blogspot.com/) and Ally Wallace (http://www.allywallace.net/) respectively.

The New Stobhill Hospital, designed by Reiach & Hall Architects (http://www.reiachandhall.co.uk/), has won numerous awards including the Prime Minister's Better Public Building Award 2010, Building Better Healthcare Awards Best Designed Hospital 2009, and Grand Prix Roses Design Awards Best Public Building 2009 Gold.

Fremantle has worked on a number of artist-led projects including Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison (http://theharrisonstudio.net/) and David Haley's Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom (http://greenhousebritain.greenmuseum.org/). He has been working with PLATFORM (http://www.platformlondon.org/) on Remember Saro-Wiwa (http://remembersarowiwa.com/), with responsibility for fundraising. He developed and managed the ten year 'landscape as art' project Place of Origin (http://www.publicartscotland.com/reflections/34), by artists John Maine, Brad Goldberg and Glen Onwin. Place of Origin won a Saltire Award in 2007. He established the Cairngorm Landscape Art Project currently being undertaken by Arthur Watson.

Fremantle is a member of the Executive of the Scottish Artists Union (http://www.sau.org.uk/). He helped establish and contributes to the programme of the Ayrshire Arts Network (http://www.ayrshirearts.com/) and is on the board of the Ayr Gaiety Partnership (http://www.thegaiety.co.uk/). He was formerly Director of Scottish Sculpture Workshop (http://www.ssw.org.uk/), and Links Officer with South Ayrshire Council.

He has a Masters in Cultural History and an Undergraduate Degree in English and Philosophy. He was appointed Honorary Senior Research Fellow by Duncan of Jordanstone, University of Dundee in 2010.

 



Green House Britain - Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison

Personal Statement

"We really need to move beyond nouns, thinking of buildings and developments as discrete entities, art as a commodity rather than as service to communities and ecosystems. Mix, interconnect, hybridize, challenge, delight and engage wherever we can, with tons of compassion, diversity and experimentation." Sam Bower, Greenmuseum.org.

My research interests focus on the complexity of creative practices engaged with a range of interlinked contexts (ecology, health, activism, cultural history, inhabitation, etc.). Underlying these pragmatics is an investigation of systems aesthetics: seeking to understand practices in art that are also interwoven into wider social and environmental programmes and project.

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