News — Jun 13, 2017

The Stedelijk Museum and Holland Festival have been co-commissioning a visual artist to present a free-access public artwork on Amsterdam’s Museum Square since 2015. The initiative kicked off with Liam Gillick, who presented his largest-ever installation All-Imitate-Act. In 2016, the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija created the work Tomorrow is the Question. This year, it’s the turn of the London-based architects’ collective åyr.

 In I’d Rather Be Outside, åyr addresses the promises of the construction industry and the issues surrounding today’s housing crisis. For this project, åyr collaborated with graphic designer Fabian Harb to develop a printable font and asked New York-based curator Harry Burke to select fragments from poems by Joan Larkin, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Carry van Bruggen, Sophie Collins and Bhanu Kapil. åyr also invited Martha Rosler to exhibit her work Housing Is a Human Right, an animated billboard critiquing the alarming increase in homelessness in the United States, originally installed on Times Square by the artist in 1989.

More about åyr 

åyr was founded in 2014 in London by four architects on the occasion of an exhibition, AIRBNB Pavilion. The collective tackles issues relating to ownership, privacy and sharing within the domestic space. They have made ‘smart homes’ and exhibited in apartments rented on online platforms. The new installation on Museumplein, I'd Rather Be Outside, was co-commissioned by Holland Festival and the Stedelijk Museum. 

More about Holland Festival 

This year, Holland Festival celebrates its 70th birthday with one of the biggest programmes in its history. The festival takes place from 3 – 25 June and features a varied line-up of international artists with an exhilarating mix of performances and concerts from all corners of the world. Click here for more information about Holland Festival.  

Note to editors

For more information, visual material and to register for the private opening, please contact the Stedelijk Museum Press Office: 020 – 5732 656/ 660 or pressoffice@stedelijk.nl 

Credit

I'd Rather Be Outside is made possible by Bouwfonds Cultuurfonds, Bruil, Movares en Roseboom. 

Holland Festival is supported by: