About
Key people
and partners
Martin Firrell
Artist and Creative Director, The Gallery
Martin Firrell is a British public artist whose works challenge unjust power systems of all kinds, including patriarchal power, the oppression of women and non-heterosexuals, and the heteronormative status quo. He uses language to engage directly with the public, provoking dialogue about more equitable social organisation. The artist’s reported aim is ‘to make the world more humane’. His work has been summarised as ‘art as debate’.
The Gallery has no building. No walls to keep people out. Or to keep the artworks in. The Gallery is able to be everywhere because it is powered by the UK Out-of-Home Industry.
Martin Firrell
Artist and Creative Director, The Gallery
Bakul Patki
Curator (Season 3, 4 & 5), The Gallery
Bakul Patki is an independent curator, creative producer and writer with over two decades experience working across arts and culture.
She works independently and for organisations to devise, develop and deliver projects with individual artists, studios, institutions, festivals, and charities, as well as brands who have an interest in working with and supporting creativity.
She is passionate about bringing art into the public realm – extending its reach and amplifying its impact by removing physical, social and/or perceived barriers – and creating interventions and interactions that surprise and delight, move and inspire.
Over her career she has curated and produced exhibitions, installations, performances and panels, at a number of prestigious locations and events, including Royal Hampton Court Palace, Somerset House, Piccadilly Circus in London, the Photo Museum of Ireland in Dublin, The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, Documenta 15 in Kassel, Frieze LA and London and Miami Art Basel.
She regularly hosts and participates in panels, most recently speaking at Art Dubai, as part of the talk, ‘Reimagining Public Space: Art, Architecture, and the Politics of Urban Identity’, and moderating the closing talk at the inaugural Architecture and Design Film Festival in Mumbai, on the theme, ‘Culture is Ordinary’.
I’m incredibly proud that with this season of The Gallery we’re broaching perhaps the most urgent issue of our time – the climate crisis.
Experts warn we’re failing to make the changes we need to secure a liveable future, and climate change is impacting every community in every country, as well as the natural world we inhabit.
I’m excited to see how artists respond to our theme ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’, and how different perspectives and stories might help us reconsider our situation.
Bakul Patki
Curator (Season 3, 4 & 5), The Gallery
Artichoke
Leading UK arts production company, Artichoke, works with artists to create extraordinary and ambitious public art in cities, the countryside and on coastlines around the UK. We believe in the transformative power of art to undermine the mundane and disrupt the every day to create a new kind of world that we’d all like to live in.
Artichoke was founded in 2005 to bring The Sultan’s Elephant by Royale de Luxe to central London. For the first time, streets normally reserved for state occasions or sporting events were taken over by art. The Elephant changed the landscape for outdoor art forever and catapulted Artichoke into the public eye.
The company has continued to work with artists ever since, producing unique, large-scale experiences that appeal to the widest possible audience.Â
Previous projects include The Sultan’s Elephant (London 2006); La Machine (Liverpool 2008), Antony Gormley’s One & Other for the Fourth Plinth (London 2009), Lumiere (2009 – 2023), PROCESSIONS (UK-wide 2018) and HERD (2023).
British Council
Partner (Season 5), The Gallery
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide. We do this through our work in arts and culture, education and the English language. We work with people in over 200 countries and territories and are on the ground in more than 100 countries. In 2022–23 we reached 600 million people.
The UK/Brazil Season of Culture is a celebration of the creative process – looking at how culture is developed, how it’s shared and how it is experienced by people everywhere. There are few projects that embody the idea that art is for everyone better than The Gallery. Following its success in the UK, now it’s Brazil’s turn.
It’s powerful to know that millions of people, across thousands of locations in the UK and Brazil will collectively reflect on a topic as important as the climate crisis, all sparked by the power of public art.
Tom Birtwistle
Director, British Council Brazil
Bren O’Callaghan
Curator (Seasons 1 & 2), The Gallery
Bren is an experienced Curator and Creative Producer whose practice aims to inspire wider engagement, foster collaboration and empower artists and audiences. He draws upon a diverse background in programming, commissioning and production, including visual art, film, performance, broadcast, public realm and publishing.
Bren’s curatorial interests sit at the crossroads of art, counterculture, and activism, frequently championing those excluded from the mainstream, with an emphasis upon meaningful application to a variety of lived experience.
We want to leverage the opportunity to meet somewhere in between; not in battle, but an open forum.
Akin to lobbing a football into no-man’s land during a pause in hostilities, only it happens to bounce right outside your front door.
Bren O'Callaghan
Curator (Seasons 1 & 2), The Gallery
I’m really excited about The Gallery. It’s a major new project for Artichoke, dreamed up during lockdown with Martin Firrell, and with the incredible support of our Out -of-Home partners.
Since the beginning, Artichoke has set out to transform our public spaces, producing art experiences that exist outside the walls of traditional theatres and galleries, experiences that anyone can access. With The Gallery, we are taking that ambition one step further, commissioning visual art on vital themes that will start conversations and be seen by all. While art on billboards is not new, it is the nationwide scale and breadth of this project that sets it apart, and by inviting artists to respond and challenge the way we think, we believe that we open the door to more sparky conversations.
Helen Marriage
Artichoke's CEO and Artistic Director
Bauer Media Outdoor
Bauer Media Outdoor is one of the UK’s largest Out of Home media and infrastructure companies, with more than 33,000 advertising sites nationwide. We provide both A Platform for Brands & A Platform for Good, delivering on advertisers’ media objectives whilst having a positive impact on the world around us.
We’re delighted to partner with the team at Artichoke and Martin Firrell to showcase their bold and ambitious outdoor gallery project across our OOH estate.
As a Platform for Brands and a Platform for Good, our medium is perfectly placed to bring art to communities all around the UK and engage people from all walks of life in public discourse around topics that matter to all of us.
Martin Corke
UK CMO and Europe Marketing Lead at Bauer Media Outdoor
JCDecaux
JCDecaux’s network of outdoor advertising displays is one of the largest in the global media industry. Every day, JCDecaux reaches an audience of 850 million people on the planet.
We are delighted to be working with Artichoke and Martin Firrell using the power of the public Out-of-Home screen to champion this important and thought-provoking new art project.
Out-of-Home plays a unique role in the daily lives of people in cities across the nation, making it the ideal medium to showcase the work of these talented artists to an audience of millions. As a public medium that drives fame and creates attention, Out-of-Home can also help bring communities together, providing a nationwide platform for artists to transform the public space.