OPEN CALL: The Sam Wills And JD Rooney Bequest Commission
This Open Call will not be activated for submissions until the death of the last surviving artist, Sam Wills or JD Rooney. Until then, it exists as a time capsule within an infinite, immortal project unfolding across generations.
Overview
We invite proposals for a public artwork to be realised at The Bath Green in Moville, a scenic coastal space bequeathed in the early 20th century by the aristocratic Anglo-Irish Montgomery family. Sam Wills and JD Rooney have bequeathed this open call in their Last Will and Testament, leaving instructions for a new artwork to replace their sculpture currently installed on Bath Green, to be realised one year after the death of the last of them.
Deadline: Undetermined - the successful commission will be installed one year after the death of either Sam Wills or JD Rooney
Location: The Bath Green, Moville, County Donegal, Ireland
Artist Fee: Minimum €1,000 (likely to increase, see budget section for more detail)
Production Budget: Minimum €1,000 (likely to increase, see budget section for more detail)
Open: This Open Call will be open for submission upon the death of the last surviving artist.
The Bath Green
This land carries a complex colonial legacy of Robert Montgomery, born in Moville in 1809, rose to power and wealth as Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab under the British East India Company, where he played a key role in suppressing the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The district of Montgomery, now known as Sahiwal in present-day Pakistan, was named in his honor. The wealth he extracted was later used by his son to gift a pleasure park, The Bath Green, to the town of Moville.
In response to this layered history, the Sam Wills and JD Rooney Bequest Commission seeks to enact an immortal, cross-generational collabortation to occupy this site of symbolic power. This open call, authored in the year 2025, will be concluded posthumously, inviting a second-generation artwork to replace their own. This is a time-travelling collaboration, one that engages with legacy, mortality and immortality, commemoration and the current and imagined future state of public sculpture.
Key Themes and Ideas
Proposals are encouraged to engage with the commission on a conceptual level, playing with ideas of time, immortality, and bequeathing as a creative medium. We’d like to see projects which question;
• How can a bequest be a creative gesture and medium: How can an artwork reframe bureaucracy as a creative tool?
• Time as a material: Slow art, speculation, duration. How can an artwork disrupt common notions of time in relation to the human lifespan?
• Immortality, memorialisation, and the symbolic preservation of power
• Circular lifecycles
• Public memory and the mechanisms of commemoration
• Integration of artistic gestures into daily life and everyday spaces
Once a colonial funded bequest, now a site of quiet daily life, The Bath Green invites reflection on who gets to define heritage, write legacies, and shape futures. This commission employs art as a form of counter-monument-making, reclaiming attempts at immortality to challenge whose legacy is sanctioned and remembered.
Open date:
This Open Call will become active upon the death of the last surviving artist. At that point, submissions will be welcomed and reviewed by the appointed successor to the project, who will oversee the selection process and steward the commission into its next phase.
Eligibility
The only creative requirement of this brief is that the project explores cross-generational collaboration, with an emphasis on works that can evolve over time, be inherited, and engage with the time-specific conditions of this commission.
We welcome proposals from living artists, including individuals and groups such as activists, architects, collectives and community groups.
Proposals are not limited to sculpture and may be in any medium, including the immaterial and invisible.
Budget
• Artist fee: €1,000
• Production budget: €1,000
These amounts are subject to change and will likely increase. Budgets will be reviewed periodically and reassessed by the project’s custodians during the final commissioning phase in line with inflation.
What to Submit
Applications can be submitted in any format you wish, including video or sound, but please include:
• A clear description of your idea (maximum 1,000 words)
• A short artist statement
• An artist CV
• A brief budget breakdown
• If you may not be living at the time of the work’s installation, please include clear instructions for realising the project, and indicate where your artist fee should be directed.
Please indicate in your proposal how the work holds the potential to be passed on, evolve over time, or plays with the notion of time.
How to Apply
This will be updated by the project executor upon the release of this Open Call.
FAQ
Is this a real commission?
Yes, but one defined by slowness. The project exists within and beyond the lifetime of its original artists. This is not a hypothetical call: the proposal you submit will be preserved and considered posthumously.
Can the work be ephemeral or performance-based?
Yes, as long as it acknowledges or transforms the sculptural presence of the original piece.
Can I propose something entirly speculative or hypothetical?
Yes, a core concept of this long-term project is its openness to an infinite number of imagined artworks that exist within speculative futures.