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CONTEMPORARY ART SPACES IN GLASGOW

VI
White Bike Plan (Witte Fietsenplan)

Artist
NVA
Year
2010
Medium
Mixed media
Commissioner
Glasgow International
Temporary Location
George Square, G2 1DH

Located in the heart of Glasgow’s city centre, NVA (a Glasgow-based arts organisation 1992 – 2018) created the temporary White Bike Plan installation in 2010 for that year’s Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.

Fifty specially built white bikes were ridden en masse from Kelvingrove Park to George Square for riders to pick up and start riding to different venues that were part of the festival. In doing so, participants became performers and therefore part of the work. This then meant that White Bike Plan was then dispersed all across the city.

The only catch for using these free bikes was that while you left it outside a venue to view a different part of the festival, you had to accept that someone may take your bike and ride it elsewhere. The bikes were donated to bike charities after the festival.

Re-enacting an original anarchist political action by the Provo movement in Amsterdam in 1965 led by Luud Schimmelpennink, this protest piece was against congestion, the car and social control.

White Bikes explores similar themes to those seen in Slow Down (2014) by Jacqueline Donachie.

Credit: Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.

NVA was a Glasgow-based arts organisation and charity founded by Angus Farquhar that was active between 1992 and 2018. Their name was an acronym of nacionale vitae activa, meaning ‘the right to influence public affairs’ in Latin. It was responsible for many public cultural commissions including: The Hidden Gardens, Tramway, Glasgow in 2003 and Speed of Light, Edinburgh International Festival, Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh in 2012.