Curating : Creating

Issue 28:4 | December 2008

The creativity in curating. Are curators really artists in disguise? and how far does the way in which they conceive and execute big shows, in particular biennales, influence the direction of art practice? What makes one curatorial program worthy but dull and another sparkling and engaging? Artists and curators share their expert knowledge on new attitudes and perceptions of visual culture, ingenuity, innovation, global exchange, curating in Asia, place and site, career trajectories from artist to curator to museum director and training options for wannabe curators. The Berlin, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, Sydney Biennales and Manifesta are examined. New rules of engagement with the public via private and state sponsored enterprises and visionary futures. Writers include Felicity Fenner, Adam Jasper, Nada Prlja, Reuben Keehan, Alison Carroll, Kevin Wilson and Marcus Westbury. Plus book and exhibition reviews and more. Editor Stephanie Britton.

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In this issue

Editorial

Stephanie Britton

Curators, creators and catalysts

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.'

Marcus Westbury

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.

Simon Gregg

Curating a psycho-geography Campbelltown Arts Centre and the genius of Lisa Havilah

Campbelltown Arts Centre's chief curator and director Lisa Havilah creates challenging and confronting exhibitions like For Matthew and Others (2006), News from Islands (2007) and Ai Weiwei: Under Construction (2008). She believes that: 'contemporary art centres that sit outside of the metropolitan centres provide the highest level of opportunity for the development and application of new forms of curatorial practice.'

Adam Jasper

Beyond the temples: the way of idiosyncracy

Professor and artist Pat Hoffie interviewed highly creative, innovative and idiosyncratic curator Kevin Wilson, once Director of Linden, Director at Noosa Gallery where he devised The Floating Land project and most recently Program Director with the Queensland Artworkers Alliance and their ARC Biennial that opens in October 2009.

Pat Hoffie

To curate or not to curate, 2008 in Europe: urban BB5 and post-industrial Manifesta 7

London-based Macedonian artist and writer Nadja Prlja compares the urban and modern 5th Berlin Biennial BB5: When Things Cast No Shadow (5 April - 15 June 2008) with Manifesta 7 (19 July - 2 November 2008) which occupied the whole arae of Trentoni in Italy. Prlja pays particular attention to the differences in the ways the projects were curated.

Nada Prlja

Curatorial Asia a twenty year perspective

As Director of Asialink Arts Alison Carroll has had twenty years of experience curating and facilitating the curation of exhibitions in or connected to Asia. Her analysis emphasises the complexity and cultural differences experienced by Asian curators in their home countries and looks forward to a more glocal future as they increase their international presence.

Alison Carroll

Places and contexts in two Singapore Biennales: curating courtrooms, containers and camps

Curator of the 2008 Adelaide Biennale Felicity Fenner discriminates between site-specific and site-responsive art practices in an analysis of the last two Singapore Biennales. She suggests that responding to the site may be the best way for a biennale to become more than an expo.

Felicity Fenner

Curating Chinese themes: cheap labour, migration and capital, Shanghai Biennale and Guangzhou Triennial

In September 2008 Dylan Rainforth went to both the 7th Shanghai Biennale (Translocalmotion) and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (Farewell to Post-Colonialism). While he found mixed messages in Shanghai which was curated by artistic director Zhang Qing assisted by Julian Heynen and Henk Slager, it was Guangzhou curated by Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj and Johnson Chang that hit the sweet spot with 'witty, people-powered ways forward.'

Dylan Rainforth

Manray Hsu taking a political position

Prominent Australian curator Victoria Lynn interviewed Berlin and Taipei-based independent curator Manray Hsu about his notions of decentralised cosmopolitanism and Archipuncture (a sort of acupunture that artists do to cities)..

Victoria Lynn

Hello Tokyo! Good to see you again

Artspace curator Reuben Keehan reflects on the Australia-Japan Visual Art Forum convened by Asialink in June 2008 as the Biennale of Sydney opened. The thirty delegates concluded the stimulating forum with recommendations about ongoing collaborations between curators using a variety of models, as well as the new ideas to be pursued of audience-in-residence programs and an Asian version of Manifesta.

Reuben Keehan

Hello Tokyo! Process is all

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

Reuben Keehan

Hello Tokyo! Ghostings

Bec Dean

Hello Tokyo! Flagging it

Some Material Flags, MOT Tokyo, 22 October - 12 January 2009. Louisa Bufardeci

Rachel Kent

Throwing voices

Senior Curator at Christchurch Art Gallery Justin Paton reflects on curating the exhibition that he remembers most fondly and that speaks to him of the magic of curating - the show of wall paintings called Big Talk by US word- artist Kay Rosen in 2004 at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Justin Paton

Back from the brink: culture in Timor-Leste

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT)'s Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture Joanna Barrkman curated Husi Bei Ala Timor Sira Nia Liman /From the Hands of Our Ancestors which is on at MAGNT in Darwin from 21 November 2008 to 12 July 2009. The show celebrates the survival of Timor-Leste's cultural inheritance and asks whether traditional art forms and techniques have a role to play in the formation and assertion of Timor-Leste's national and cultural identity.

Joanna Barrkman

Firing across the gaps

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.

Cath Bowdler

Species enhancement by international gene pool

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.

Craig Judd

Curating paths, musical chairs

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.

Melentie Pandilovski

So you want to be a curator?

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.

Joanna Mendelssohn

I've looked at love from both sides now: reflections on freelance / independent / guest curating

Juliette Peers, art historian and lecturer at RMIT, surveyed a number of freelance curators to find out how they work and why they embrace this insecure, interstitial existence. Hannah Mathews, Elizabeth Gertzakis, Vivonne Thwaites and Anne Kirker are among the freelance curators to whom she spoke.

Juliette Peers

Emerging, educating and unruly: Vivonne Thwaites

Hahndorf Academy Curator Melinda Rankin reflects on the recent work of legendary freelance curator Vivonne Thwaites who introduced Rankin to the deep levels of research, the surprises, the risks and the sheer hard work of being a curator.

Melinda Rankin

Video loops and VIP dinners: 2008 Beijing and Hong Kong Art Fairs

Artlink Executive Editor Stephanie Britton 'did' two major art fairs in our region, the first ever in Hong Kong - ART HK08 and the fifth Beijing one - CIGE (China International Gallery Exposition). She found them both fascinating and especially enjoyed the Mapping Asia and Alternative Energy sections of CIGE and the symposium organised by Asia Art Archive at HK08.

Stephanie Britton

What would it mean to win? a film by Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler

Gerald Raunig

Artrave

Catherine David's Transmission

Renowned French curator Catherine David visited Auckland to judge the Walters Prize; she awarded the $50,000 prize to Peter Robinson. John Hurrell artist, curator and blogger of NZ art reviews and critical discussion site eyeCONTACT spoke to Catherine about her curating of the Lyon Biennial which touches down in late 2009, and the relationship between artists and curators.

John Hurrell