It is a dreamlike, or possibly nightmarish, art installation – a huge, menacing, fluorescent Richard Branson and a jazz saxophone played discordantly by an apparently naked man. The work by Benedict Drew opens to the public at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool on Friday.
It is owned by the Arts Council Collection (ACC), this year celebrating its 70th birthday, and its unveiling coincided with the launch of a new exhibition and 2017 programme. Leading figures in the art world gathered at the Walker to hear details of new plans for ACC exhibitions at four national partner galleries: the Walker, the Towner in Eastbourne, Birmingham Museums Trust and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Jill Constantine, head of the collection, said it was an important day that resonated with the ACC’s founding principles: “One of the original aims of the collection was to disseminate art as widely as possible across the country and we hold that true today.”
The collection has been acquiring works to support artists at the early stage in their careers since 1946 and currently has about 8,000 works by more than 2,000 artists. It makes more than 1,000 loans to over 100 venues each year with regular touring exhibitions.
Constantine said 1.5 million people had encountered a work from the collection last year, not counting the works lent to hospitals, universities and libraries. The new national partners programme would allow deeper relationships and mean even more people seeing works. “We want people to understand that this is their collection, come and see it, enjoy contemporary art,” she said.
The collection has an acquisitions budget of £230,000 a year, at least £50,000 of which is ringfenced for artists working outside London. It was from that budget that the ACC this year bought Drew’s work. Called Kaput, it takes up two rooms at the Walker. In one is the giant Richard Branson head with orange cables protruding from his eyes, apparently controlling foil-covered beating heart sculptures.
There is also noisy industrial feedback, the saxophonist and a low platform on which viewers can glimpse the Virgin spacecraft Branson wants to send to the moon. Drew said the work was exploring how “the once utopian idea of space tourism was lost to the ultimate oligarch adventure, fronted by Virgin Galactic”.
Elsewhere at the Walker are other works from the ACC, including a huge inflatable Felix the Cat by Mark Leckey; and works by artists from north-west England – Mary Griffiths, Joe Fletcher Orr, Paul Rooney, Jason Thompson and Jesse Wine.
Ten minutes walk away, at Liverpool’s Bluecoat, a solo exhibition by Keith Piper opens on Friday with an ACC commission as its centrepiece – a video work called Unearthing the Banker’s Bones (2016).
Next year, highlights of the new national partners programme will include an exhibition at the Walker called Coming Out, exploring sexuality and gender identity in the 50 years since male homosexual acts were partially decriminalised in England and Wales.
At Yorkshire Sculpture Park, works by artists including Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry will be in a show exploring childhood experience and memory.
At Birmingham museum and art gallery, there will be an art and technology show. And at Eastbourne there will be an exhibition looking at how artists have responded to the materiality and idea of light.
The driving aim is to get more people to see more of the works not everyone who pays UK taxes knows they own.
“We are a bit elusive in our identity because we don’t have a public gallery,” said Constantine. “But we do a huge amount of work with museums and galleries across the country and we can be a vital lifeline for galleries, especially in the current climate. We’ve been collecting for 70 years and I don’t think there is a work that has never been lent.”
