CONTEMPORARY ARTIST COMMISSION BRIEF: FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF THE SELFIE!!!OVERVIEW!Sandwell Museum Service is asking for interested individual artists, organisations or partnerships to deliver a new art commission as part of its current exhibition Four Hundred Years of The Selfie: Portraits From The Ingestre Collection. The piece should respond to the exhibition, involve and represent local people; and will be on permanent display following the exhibition at Ingestre Hall alongside the portrait collection. !!BACKGROUND!in 1959 Ingestre Hall, one of the country houses of the Shrewsbury family, was purchased by Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council. Since then its chief use has been as a residential arts centre, enabling generations of schoolchildren from Sandwell schools to spend time in an inspiring and unique location; and develop their skills in all forms of artistic practice.!!Along with the house came a collection of portraits of the Shrewsbury (also known as the Talbots) family from the Tudor period to the Victorians. Included in this are several pieces by significant artists in the history of English portrait painting, including Van Ceulens, Mary Beale, Peter Lely, Michael Dahl, Marie Vigee-Lebrun, Pompeo Batoni and several good examples of Tudor English School painting.!!For the first time works from the collection, alongside some of Martin Parr's contemporary portrait photographs taken in Sandwell, and portrait photographs from the Sandwell History and Archive Service, are on show at an exhibition at Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery until the end of Au-gust 2014.!!THE BRIEF!Sandwell Museums would like to commission a contemporary artist(s) to respond to the exhibition and create a new piece of art. The piece will be created through inter-actions with the people of Sandwell, particularly Wednesbury that will take place over the summer and early autumn of 2014. As part of their submission artists will be asked for their proposals for workshops, community events or other mechanisms by which public inter-actions can take place and create content for the work.!!There will be an initial unveiling of the work in the autumn of 2014 at Wednesbury, prior to perma-nent installation in the later autumn of 2014 at a location at Ingestre Hall. The work will then be used, as the portrait collection is, as inspiration, a starting point and a focus for discussion, by artists and teachers at Ingestre Hall in their work with young people who are on residentials there. Ingestre also holds a number of public open days each year and the work will be on view as part of these.!!ARTFORMS!We are open to any medium that could be used to create portraiture - for example painting, pho-tography, video, sculpture, textiles, ceramics etc. Documentary photography is less likely to suc-ceed as Martin Parr and other photographers are already engaged in this work in Sandwell (see the galleries on www.multistory.org.uk). ! !SKILLS REQUIRED AND WORKING CONTEXT!!Good engagement skills with people from all walks of life!!Self-starter and used to managing own projects!!!

!!Their will be limited technical assistance in the installations at Wednesbury and Ingestre, but we are looking for an artist who is used to managing the creation and delivery of their own work to museums and galleries.!!!BUDGET!!There is a fee for the commissioned artist available of £4000.00 and a materials and production budget of up to £4000.00. All figures are inclusive of VAT. The artist will be required to present evi-dence of spend for the production budget.!!TIMETABLE!Tender brief distributed 21 July 2014!Application process closes 5:00pm Mon 4 Aug 2014!Artists interviews Friday 8 August 2014 in Sandwell!Public work commences August 2014!Unveiling of work at Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery October 2014!Permanent installation at Ingestre Hall November 2014!!!HOW TO APPLY!!Please submit a proposal. No more than 8 pages of A4 detailing:!!Your overall approach to the project; the art-forms to be used; and the links to both portraiture in general and the Ingestre collection.!!An indication of the types of groups you would be interested in working with and how you plan to interact with them and source content from them.!!Details of a public programme you would run at Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery during the summer holiday period of not less than four days, targeting walk-in and family audiences.!!An outline of the final form that the piece will take and installation requirements for both Wednes-bury Museum and Art Gallery and Ingestre Hall. You should assume that any video will be dis-played in ambient lighting. !!Your experience of previous commissions and in particular your experience of incorporating inter-actions with the public into your artwork.!You may include links to online portfolios and useful resources. Please do not send original artwork as we cannot guarantee its safe return.!!Interviews will be in Sandwell on Friday 8 August - please do not apply if you are not available on this date for interview.!!!!!!!!!

!!!Submissions should be sent to:!!Trevelyan Wright!66 Blenheim Road!Moseley!Birmingham !B13 9TZ!!or preferably submitted online to trevelyan.wright@b-arts.org.uk!!No later than 5:00pm on Monday 4 August 2014!!!!For more information please contact either:!!Stuart Lane at Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery for general queries on both Wednesbury and Ingestre Hall on 0121 556 0683!!Hilary Hughes at B Arts on info@b-arts.org.uk if you have a question about the artwork in the exhi-bition that Stuart Lane cannot answer.!!You can see a slideshow of images from the exhibition and the exhibition guide at:!!www.trevelyanwright.com