Is there a role for the insurance industry to become more attuned with abstract art as a way of reducing their liabilities, increasing profits while simultaneously helping forge a new way of societal interaction? Utopian drivel? Or possibly an unexpected outcome noted during the Waste.Agency’s abstract art intervention presently taking place in the insurance district of the City of London. Waste.Agency, Jon Pigram "I Love Vectrex, Nov 2014 Police forces, councils, NGOs, prop

Monday 17th November 2014 Arts Council England and SHM-Foundation have awarded funding towards maintaining the Waste.Agency intervention, which begun in a disused HMV record store in the heart of the City of London on 3rd October 2014. The Waste.Agency is applying 6-years of research gathered by Platform-7’s through a series of abstract art performance events exploring how people reach opinions on various issues that have broader social consequences. This is the first applic

Walking through London’s Trafalgar Square this evening, I happened upon a small but vocal protest against Shell Oil funding the Rembrandt exhibition, which recently opened at the National Gallery. As I stop to observe, a casual conversation developed with one of the protesters. Although respectful to the principle, and sympathetic to the underlying point the protest was attempting to make, there was a certain amount of simplicity that I found uncomfortably, and I often find

Nestled between London’s two latest skyscrapers, the Leadenhall Building aka `The Cheesegrater’, and 20 Fenchurch Street aka `The Walkie-Talkie’, Platform-7 has taken over a disused HMV* for 6 weeks as part of a new 3-year performance art intervention, the waste.agency [map]. In addition, London Cannon Street train station± will be exhibiting a range of artworks and photography, some concerning trackside scrap, curated by Platform-7 as part of this project. Discussing consu

Provocation Article 4: This is the fourth in a series of provocative articles taken from a paper by Platform-7's founder critiquing the fad for hubs and the idea (within the UK) of the creative economy. These article will appear over the summer of 2014 in advance of a major new Platform-7 intervention, Creative Publics, beginning Autumn 2014. Professor Andy Pratt states in his study, The Enigma that is Platform-7, that the company ‘offers in civil society realms, new modaliti

Provocation Article 3: This is the third in a series of provocative articles taken from a paper by Platform-7 founder critiquing the fad for hubs and the idea (within the UK) of the creative economy. These article will appear over the summer of 2014 in advance of a major new Platform-7 intervention, Creative Publics, beginning Autumn 2014. John Hegarty is regarded within the advertising industry as one of its creative stars. Founding from scratch the now global advertising g

Provocation Article 2: This is the second in a series of provocative articles taken from a paper by Platform-7's founder critiquing the fad for hubs and the idea (within the UK) of the creative economy. These article will appear over the summer of 2014 in advance of a major new Platform-7 intervention, Creative Publics, beginning Autumn 2014. The present trend in London and other global cities (Pratt and others) are ‘hubs’. Generally geared towards the ‘entrepreneur’, a misun

Provocation Article 1: This is the first in a series of provocative articles taken from a paper by Platform-7's founder critiquing the fad for hubs and the idea (within the UK) of the creative economy. These article will appear over the summer of 2014 in advance of a major new Platform-7 intervention, Creative Publics, beginning Autumn 2014. Great artists can often hone in on slight discrepancies that exist within our environment and highlight that divergence for others to se