Francesca Giuliano and Mike Abrahams are interdisciplinary artists who collaborate to make work that explores the symbiotic relationship between individuals and the communities and organisations they formally or informally belong to.
Their process actively invites audiences to generate the word- and text-based raw data that becomes the content of the art.
With backgrounds in user-experience design, branding, event curation, and community organisation, Abrahams and Giuliano’s collaboration began in 2021 during the global pandemic with a project around the closed Dalston CLR James Library in east London. They recognised that many of the everyday physical opportunities for communal participation – religious gatherings, shopping, sport, commuting, office work etc – were severely restricted if not banned outright, depriving the public of a basic human need.
The artists have responded by creating projects that directly invite the crowd to participate in informing the ‘content’ of the artwork. This offers the public an opportunity to be part of something that is bigger than the sum of its parts and gives the artists, and partner organisations, an insight into the zeitgeist.
Each project proposal is developed through research, and the artists then identify and approach potential (institutional) partners to establish the discourse around the work. The partners’ role is that of project enabler.
Methods and channels for public engagement are established and specific responses elicited from the partner’s audiences. The intention is that every project creates a sense of ‘ownership’ which oscillates between the artists, the public contributors and the partner.
The public’s responses, when analysed, inform the content of the final work through the preparation of sketches and/or maquettes and discussions with the partner prior to production of the final artwork which may be physical, virtual, temporary or permanent. A review and archive is prepared at the end of the project.
Giuliano and Abrahams’ artworks mark a moment in time, yet are also timeless. Their work may intrigue, delight and inspire, but ultimately reveal the complex and often imbalanced connection between the individual and society.
Contact us at:
Abrahams Giuliano 