01 / PUBLIC GROUND

PUBLIC GROUND

The city enters the work

A basketball court becomes a drawing people play inside. A chair gathers daylight and glows after dark. A public sculpture meets people who have not come to see art.

Public Ground brings together permanent and semi-permanent artworks, temporary installations, participatory projects and curatorial work in shared places. Each begins with different people and conditions. Some works become familiar over years. Others bring people together for a few days or a season. A short stay can make the encounter more intense.
Make Your Leap, a site-specific public sculpture occupied in the landscape
MAKE YOUR LEAP / HASSELFORS, SWEDEN, 2021
About this work

Make your Leap brings the grasshopper from our studio practice into the landscape at Hasselfors. The figure that appears as a small mark in other works becomes a sculpture encountered at the scale of the body.

Grasshopper Mind

TAPE ÖREBRO

Making a square together

People making a brightly colored tape mural together in an Örebro square after dark
TAPE ÖREBRO / THE SQUARE STAYS AWAKE

A strip of tape marks a first decision. Someone else continues the line, interrupts it or takes the image elsewhere. Making becomes visible in the square: hands, disagreements, small discoveries. People can join the work, watch it change or stay for a while.

A conversation can begin with a strip of tape

Project credits

Tape art workshops at Krämartorget led by Tape That Collective, organized by Örebro Bostäder in collaboration with GILABASE, whose artistic directors are Giovanna E. Aguirre and Lars J. Jonnson. The tape artworks are by Tape That Collective with the participants.

Project context: ÖrebroBostäder’s Krämartorget tape-art workshops, 2026

THE SQUARE OPENS
MAKING BECOMES A PUBLIC EVENT
SMALL DECISIONS BUILD A WALL
Participants gathered around a long outdoor table making images with colored tape
OPEN WORKSHOP / COLOR MOVES FROM HAND TO HAND
People completing the reverse side of a colorful tape mural beneath a blue sky and tower
TAPE ÖREBRO / ANOTHER SIDE OF THE SQUARE

BASKET + ART / BRICKEBACKEN, ÖREBRO, 2021

STEP INTO THE PICTURE

Aerial view of the complete Basket and Art basketball court in Brickebacken, Örebro
BASKET + ART / WITH YOUNG PEOPLE IN BRICKEBACKEN, ÖREBRO, 2021 / AERIAL VIEW
About this project

We worked with a group of young summer workers over three weeks to make a public artwork on a basketball court in Brickebacken. Drawing, painting and collage moved from paper toward the scale of the court. Our shared studio practice informed how we made room for different proposals and developed them into a work people could use.

Project documentation on GilaBASE
Young people using a transformed public basketball court
BASKET + ART / PLAYERS ENTER THE IMAGE

A game has room for an unexpected move

A cyclist and pedestrians crossing a colorful geometric artwork laid across the pavement
MAKES YOU WONDER / PEOPLE CROSS THE DRAWING
Walking bodies and their shadows crossing the geometric public ground artwork
MAKES YOU WONDER / THE BODY CROSSES THE IMAGE
Visitors moving among large drawings and open sculptural structures in the Terra Nova exhibition
TERRA NOVA / EXHIBITION VIEW
TERRA NOVA ART PROJECT / VISBY, 2024 / TAKING NEW STEPS

A public work and a participatory process with Region Gotland’s Daily Activity Services.

About this project

We led a participatory project connected to the new Terra Nova housing in Visby, in collaboration with Region Gotland’s employment and daily activity services. Participants worked with images, objects and movement, trying and changing ideas through making. The project concluded with an exhibition at the art museum in Visby.

Project documentation on GilaBASE

02 / OBJECT / BODY

Some objects wait for the body

SUN CHAIRS

Three Sun Chairs — blue-green, red-purple and orange-yellow — collect sunlight by day. After dark, each chair glows in its own color.

Some objects wait for the light to leave

Two people sitting together on a turquoise Sun Chair in daylight
SUN CHAIRS / BLUE-GREEN / DAYLIGHT
Two people sitting on a red-purple Sun Chair glowing after dark
SUN CHAIRS / RED-PURPLE / AFTER DARK
Suspended cut-out forms moving across a garden
PLAYFUL THINGAMABOB / KINETIC INSTALLATION
PLAYFUL THINGAMABOB / AIR, WEATHER, MOVEMENT

03 / PEOPLE / PROCESS

Adventure Playground and Milestones

ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND + MILESTONES / FROM CONVERSATION TO SHARED PLACES

Pupils and collaborators drawing ideas around a workshop table
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND / WORKING WITH IDEAS AND RESULTS
About this project

For Äventyrstrappan, we worked with pupils to shape an accessible place for movement and play in Brickebackeskogen, Örebro. Their drawings, models and sand-cast brass forms became proposals for the site. We assembled a visual guide for the municipality’s parks department. A pupil’s figure was enlarged in marble; another drawing became a form in polished stainless steel.

Project publication on GilaBASE
Pupils and collaborators exploring marks together in sand
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND / TACTILE TEST
Pupils and a collaborator developing a playground model together
ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND / MODEL-MAKING

A hand was already a plan

Barsikow residents raising a tall metal sculpture together
MILESTONES / BARSIKOW, 2021 / RAISING TOGETHER
A Milestones sculpture remaining in the Barsikow landscape
MILESTONES / MANY STILL REMAIN IN THE LANDSCAPE
About this project

Barsikow’s historic milestones gave us a shared starting point, but the work developed through what residents found in their homes and barns. We led the process from stories and experiments toward sculptures made and installed together. Materials, local skills and practical obstacles changed the plans along the way. The objects and the experience of making them became part of the village’s life.

Milestones publication on GilaBASE
MILESTONES / WELDING ELEMENTS INTO OBJECTS
MILESTONES / WORKING TOGETHER — CREATING COLLECTIVE INSTALLATIONS

04 / PUBLIC IMAGE

A public work meets people who did not come to see art

Pink Tank and information walls occupying a civic square
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION — PINK TANK RE:VISITED / CIVIC SPACE

Aguirre & Jonnson — exhibition concept, development and installation, Örebro–Stockholm, 2019. Pink Tank artwork: David Černý.

About this project

We created Democracy in Action as an exhibition concept in 2019, marking thirty years since the democratic movements of 1989. David Černý’s Pink Tank was presented within a broader program of historical material, photographs, artworks and public conversations. We wanted to celebrate those changes while insisting that democracy has to be actively defended. The anniversary was also a warning about what can be lost.

Project publication on GilaBASE
Pink-painted tank against a church and cobbled square
PINK TANK RE:VISITED / POLITICAL MEMORY IN PUBLIC

Looking up changed who was being looked at

Visitors reclining beneath the suspended image field of Short Stories
SHORT STORIES / PARTICIPATORY INSTALLATION / SPATIAL VIEW
About this work

Backlit photographs hang inside cardboard boxes above a bed-like platform. To see them, visitors lie down and look up. A comfortable place to rest also exposes the body to other people’s gaze. We made this situation so that looking, sharing a place and becoming visible to others are part of the work.

Project documentation on GilaBASE
Overhead view of reclining visitors becoming part of the installation
SHORT STORIES / THE AUDIENCE BECOMES THE IMAGE

05 / SELECTED CONSTELLATION

SELECTED PUBLIC WORKS

Three Waterboxes image structures with eyes and a mouth extending across the river
WATERBOXES / PUBLIC INSTALLATION
A Waterboxes structure with a photographed mouth standing in the river
WATERBOXES / A mouth borrows the river
Tall colored Counting Sticks installed along an interior passage
COUNTING STICKS / FUNCTIONAL PUBLIC ART COMMISSION, FRAUNHOFER IAIS, SANKT AUGUSTIN, GERMANY, 2008
About this work

A usable sculpture commissioned for the entrance building at Fraunhofer IAIS. Wood, CDs, metal and acrylic paint bring the work into the building’s daily use as well as its visual space.

Life and Brain public artwork on a building facade
STALACTITES / PUBLIC ART COMMISSION FOR LIFE + BRAIN, BONN, Germany
Great Jumper in a public square between water and mountains
GREAT JUMPER / PUBLIC ART COMMISSION FOR THE MAIN SQUARE, SORTLAND, NORWAY
Project information

Proposal developed within the Creative CITYspace pre-study, Sortland, Norway, 2023.

A lone viewer looking into the illuminated Order in Chaos window installation at night
ORDER IN CHAOS, CHICAGO, USA
Big Hopper wooden public sculpture beside a lakeside path with a person approaching
BIG HOPPER / NÄKYMÄ — LAND IN SITU, AKAA, FINLAND, 2013
A person opening a vivid sculptural cabinet in a shared interior
SUMMER BREEZE / ART IN A SHARED INTERIOR
Milestone, New Energy public installation
NEW ENERGY / PUBLIC INTERVENTION, BARSIKOW / MILESTONE ART PROJECT
About this work

New Energy was made within Milestones and refers to Barsikow’s shared electric village car, introduced in 2020. The oversized plug and socket were formed from an old oil drum. Reusing that material carries the shift from oil to renewable energy into the sculpture. Connection also becomes a question of what a community holds and uses together.

Milestones publication on GilaBASE

Who connects with whom?

Painted Wastebasket among people on a city street
WASTEBASKETS / CITY CENTER, ÖREBRO
A visitor using the brightly colored Open Library sculpture
OPEN LIBRARY / SVEAPARKEN, ÖREBRO

The projects shown here are a selection from our ongoing work in shared places. We develop public commissions and projects with local communities alongside sculpture, photographic objects and installations for galleries and museums.

More public works and project documentation: GilaBASE

Grasshopper Mind — how we work

Bring us a site, a question or an unusual situation

ALL WORKS