Across the artworld today we see an increasing number of artists whose practices demonstrate that ‘exhibitions’ and their institutional hosts, are not their primary focus.

Many artists carry out their work as long-term projects that engage particular communities, often examining relationships to land and ecology, questioning systems of value and exchange, testing the mode of collective organisation, asking how the conditions of social and material life impact criticality and creativity. Such artists often operate with differing pace and responsibilities, where their ‘labour’ does not only result in objects for display but creates social value beyond the financial profit of an object sold in a gallery, or the repute of a museum or biennial.

This discussion asks how and why artists imagine their practice beyond the space of institutional display.

The rising prominence of artistic practice caring for contexts and encounters beyond the exhibition space raises broader questions about the relationship between artistic labor and the institutional frameworks that it engages. What happens when such art, organised and produced with particular social commitments, encounters institutional frameworks of a gallery, museum or biennial? How do artists navigate the differing contexts, responsibilities, and forms of value that emerge when work moves between communities, ecosystems, economies, research contexts, and cultural institutions? What assumptions should be ethically questioned with the growing institutional interest in such practice?

Bringing together artists whose work engages migration, labour, land, language, ecology, exchange, and collective experiences, this discussion explores how contemporary art moves between institutional frameworks and wider social worlds.