A curator's job is to find relationships between pieces and orchestrate of how things are viewed. There are different approaches to placing works, different relationships can be found. Even if the only similarity is the time they were made.
In some ways everyone is a curator. We all make music playlists, putting together songs with relationships.
Origin of the work: to care. Used to be known as the carers of the artwork. Their job was to look after the work and make certain decisions such as which needed to be restored etc. Nowadays being a curator is a much more creative role, more about finding harmony between works.
When we are curators of our own work it says something about the work. It can change the way people view the work. We can decide where we position the work in the world.
Through exhibitions we can channel the way the work is seen. Use of leaflets and documentation add extra information about the work. Often organised by curators.
Often have to sort funding - Arts Council. Lots of nuts and bolts to being a curator, the actual exhibition is just a small part.
Since 80s/90s there has been a rise of the curator. (Milly Thompsons talk for more information)
Different exhibitions we have been to - Louise: one in France, 5 story building, had to start at the top and work your way down to the bottom, then the exit was back at the top. Each room was red light, had to walk around with a UV light to see the art work. Certain element of control there. Only allowed them to see and move in a certain way. How does this determine how we see the work? Active curation.
Group exhibitions usually have a theme. Sometimes the theme already relates to the artists work, sometimes the artists are approached by curators who have to create work in response to the theme.
Gallery Stable: certain number of artists represented by a gallery. Can only sell work through that gallery. Every year there will be a group exhibition with that selection of artists.
Festival - inter-related thing. Biennale - every 2 years.
Going to look at the British Art Show next week - read some reviews next week. (will be on VLE)
One person show - even if no theme, still curated. Put things in certain places for certain reasons. Sometimes artists will have individual shows about a certain area of their practice, other times they will have larger exhibitions with a variety of work from their entire career. eg. Sigmar Polke. Francis Bacon. Gerhard Richter.
Group shows that artists curate themselves. Does it blur what the work is about if you curate your own exhibition?
Our task - to curate our own hypothetical exhibition. Qualify why. Choose space, how is it relevant? Write 500 words text to explain ideas. Choose who you feature in it. Theme. Place. How many pieces of work? why?
Sainsbury centre - attached to UEA - educational type gallery. Shapes what sort of work is shown there.
Where funding comes from also depends on what sort of work comes in and what events go on. eg sainsbury centre - art council - family day events.
Site specific, or inter-relation between space and the work.
Parasol unit in London, not commercial, run by charitable body. Luc Toymans curated exhibition of 'abstract art from Belgium' very specific type of work. Place and style.
Tate Britain - 'Art and Empire' historical art about the British Empire. Also specific.
Music for Museums - more of an event than a static exhibition. Not just set pieces there will be a running order and lots more for the curator to think about. - Performance art.
Task: spread out numerous images of art works across the table and in groups had to select specific ones and curate our own exhibition.
These were the first images we picked out. We went for a 'collective' theme. We included collections of individual paintings, collections of objects and a painting of what looked like a collection of objects, with a collection of colours. There were also ideas of construction (building, structure) and constriction (whipping, blindfolded) and brutality.
We then had to choose around 2 of our original images and curate a new exhibition with a new theme.
We kept Blindfolded, Marlene Dumas [2002] and decided on the new theme of hidden or obscured identities. None of the images show eyes. You can read so much meaning and emotion in someones eyes that even when that is the only part of the portrait removed (top middle), you lose so much of the emotion behind the image. Fischli and Weiss's video art (bottom right) is an example of how your whole identity can be completely removed through use of a suit.
From this we were asked to keep another 2 (ish) images and curate a new exhibition with another new theme.
We kept three images that seemed of the same painting style, and found one more piece by Goya to add in. Our tutor Craig pointed out the Goya work was painted over 100 years before all the others, yet they still manage to share a similar style.
Our groups were then mixed up and we were given an image, chosen by Craig, and asked to curate an exhibition including this image.
Our image was a piece by Paula Rego:
We came up with this group of images, all with a common theme of domesticity and authority.
These tasks were about finding micro relations. These subtle similarities bring out certain things out of certain images. Can use more obvious images to bring out more subtle things in other images that you're trying to highlight.
Other groups found relationships between colour, sculpture, chaotic.
We found it was difficult in this situation to curate as we didn't know anything about a lot of the works. Had to go purely on what they suggested aesthetically. Where images may look similar to the naive eye, the deeper meanings may be drastically different.
By putting different images in different themes there may be aspects that are important in the work but are not what you are highlighting through your curation.
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