Chris Fremantle is Research Fellow and Lecturer at Gray’s School of Art. He works as a producer of public art and design projects, a writer/editor in particular on ecoartscotland.net which he established in 2010, and artist. He lives in Ayr, studied in Aberdeen and was born in New York. His work is primarily focused on health, ecology and the arts.
In 2015 he was invited by the Ramsar Intergovernmental Convention on Wetlands to Chair their Art Focus Group. He recently chaired an event at the Ramsar Conference of the Parties in Dubai.
Several projects Chris has produced have won significant arts awards. ‘Place of Origin,’ a ‘landscape as art’ work in Aberdeenshire by John Maine, Brad Goldberg and Glen Onwin received a Saltire Award in 2007. ‘Greenhouse Britain: Losing Ground, Gaining Wisdom,’ the project by the pioneers of the ecoart movement Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (the Harrisons) received the first Nick Reeves Art and Environment Award in 2010, and the ‘Land Art Generator Glasgow’ project received the award jointly in 2016 with ecoartscotland. The NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s new Stobhill Hospital won seven major awards including Prime Minister’s Award Better Public Building 2010.
Chris has worked on 7 different art and therapeutic design projects for hospitals (NHS Ayrshire and Arran’s new Woodland View; NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and Royal Hospital for Children (with Ginkgo Projects); NHSGGC’s new Victoria Hospital, new Stobill Hospital and new Gartnavel Hospital; NHS Dumfries & Galloway’s new Royal Infirmary (with Wide Open); NHS Lothian’s new Royal Hospital for Children, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service and Department of Clinical Neurosciences (with Ginkgo Projects).
Chris is a founder member of the board of the Ayr Gaiety Partnership (which reopened the Gaiety Theatre as a social enterprise and has led it through a major refurbishment), and is a Fellow of the RSA.