Right now I am unravelling: notes on the 2008 Next Wave Festival
A lively coverage of the exciting 2008 Next Wave Festival directed by Jeff Khan. Next Wave began 24 years ago and in 2008 presented the work of around 400 artist over 61 projects.
Director of Wollongong City Gallery Craig Judd writes about the memorable experience of curating Wild Thang: post pop from the MCA, a show that combined works from the MCA's collection with corresponding pieces in the collections of the towns the exhibition visited: Bathurst, Armidale, Gold Coast and Albury.
Outgoing Director of the Experimental Art Foundation Melentie Pandilovksi spills the beans on the current state of play internationally in terms of powerful independent curators moving into important positions in museums. He puts forward the prevalence of a 'new institutionalism' seeking to redefine contemporary art institutions from within. The EAF is about to release a Futures paper on this topic.
Diorama of the City: Between Site & Space 13 September - 13 October 2008 Tokyo Wonder Site Artists: Alex Gawronski, Gail Priest, Tim Silver, Hiraku Suzuki, exonemo, Paramodel
Marcus Westbury, former director of Noise, Next Wave, TINA (This Is Not Art) festivals, and writer and presenter of Not Quite Art on ABC TV, writes about the need for art to get away from reflecting too hard on gatekeepers and their requirements. He looks at the Biennale of Sydney at Cockatoo Island, the Next Wave's The Containers Village and the Melbourne Laneways projects as good examples of stepping outside the cube. He concludes that: 'Artists are best to invest their energy in finding their audiences and their communities.'
Joanna Mendelssohn, author and Associate Professor at the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales where she co-ordinates the Master of Art Administration, writes about the highly competitive and financially unrewarding realities of getting a position as a curator in an art musuem.
In May 2008 Wagga Wagga Art Gallery's new Director Cath Bowdler curated Crossfire, an exhibition of resonating artworks from the Gallery's two major collections, the National Art Glass Collection and the Margaret Carnegie Print Collection, as a way of introducing herself to both the space and the place. Bowdler was initially inspired by the glass work Salt on Mina Mina by Dorothy Napangardi.