Curating.info

Tales of the Unexpected: the Future of Curating Contemporary Crafts
Thursday 8th November, mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) 9.45am-4.30pm

Organised by the Crafts Council and MA Curating Contemporary Design, Kingston University (in partnership with the Design Museum), Tales of the Unexpected is a conference that will explore the challenges of curating contemporary craft through a series of exciting and innovative case studies. Examples of best practice have been drawn from fine art, architecture, design, fashion and craft to explore and provide a platform for discussing future strategies for approaching curating contemporary craft. The themes for the day are:

- Craft and the Visual Arts: Pushing Boundaries
- Curating Craft in Public Spaces
- Curating Outside the Vitrine: New Approaches
- Curating Craft as Performance

Continue reading "Curating Craft: Conferences at mima"

The first edition of Curating.info Conversations is with Vancouver-based curator, Alissa Firth-Eagland.



Alissa is currently the Director/Curator of Media Art at Western Front. The interview with Alissa covered topics ranging from web 2.0, to relationship-building with artists, to advice for young curators. This interview, the first in the series of e-books that will be released here, is intended to become part of a larger conversation. Comments on the topics raised in this series of e-books are welcomed, and responses may be collected later into a companion e-book.

To create the e-book, I used the DIFFUSION e-book generator, which was developed by artist-led studio and think tank Proboscis. To enjoy your copy of this e-book, simply choose a download link below (depending on what part of the world you are in, you will require either the Letter or A4 formatted version). Once you have downloaded the PDF file, print the e-book, and assemble according to the directions on the last page of the e-book. Then read it, share it, and print another for yourself or a friend!

Download the DIFFUSION e-book:
Curating.info Conversations: Alissa Firth-Eagland - A4 Format
Curating.info Conversations: Alissa Firth-Eagland - Letter Format

(Can't open PDF files? Download a free PDF reader.)

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has just announced the exhibition curated by their inaugural Hall Curatorial Fellow, and it sounds well worth a visit. The vernissage is on 16 September, and the exhibition is on view from then until February 24, 2008. Announcement from the Aldrich follows:

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Voice & Void – curated by Thomas Trummer, the first recipient of the Hall Curatorial Fellowship.

The human voice has become a major subject in recent scholarly debates, so it is no coincidence that an Aldrich exhibition will explore the topic from an artistic vantage. In Voice & Void, Trummer will utilize the state-of-the-art sound facilities in the Museum's building to illustrate how voice–and the absence of voice–can be expressed by the visual arts.

With Voice & Void, Austrian native Thomas Trummer, will consider the effects of what happens when one sense is replaced by another, with particular focus on hearing and seeing. Trummer’s exhibition will feature both commissioned and loaned contemporary works of all media by a diverse group of international artists–including a sculptural aviary that will house two living parrots that speak the long-lost language of May-po-re!

Works by Rachel Berwick, Joseph Beuys/Ute Klophaus, John Cage, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, VALIE EXPORT, Anna Gaskell, Asta Gröting, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Hans Schabus, Nedko Solakov, Julianne Swartz, and Cerith Wyn Evans will be on view.

Continue reading "Voice & Void: 2006 Hall Curatorial Fellowship Exhibition"

Welcome to the September edition of Pick 'N Mix, my monthly annotated list of bite-sized items that have caught my eye recently.

• An interesting article about the curating scene in Singapore recently appeared online. In it, Ahmad Mashadi notes that the curator's role has become more complex, becoming implicated in marketing and sponsorship, where previously it might have been more focused on "research, growth and display" of a museum's collection. The article also discusses the emerging trend of the artist-curator in Singapore.
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• Jerry Saltz writes an excellent article on the alchemy of curating, in which he makes several bold (but astute) statements:
  "...curating is becoming less of a dark art and more of a science or profession."
  "The alchemy of good curating amounts to this: sometimes placing one work of art near another makes one and one equal three."
  "...one of the first rules of curating should be "Stop Making Sense."'
  The article goes on to dissect the curatorial strategies and pitfalls in the big three: Documenta, Venice Biennale, and Münster Sculpture Project.
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• It's rare that one has occasion to read a line like this: "No, the most interesting part of the show is that excruciating pile of false, overweening enthusiasms that make up that curatorial statement, not for what they say, necessarily, but for what they assume." In Artfag's "Toronto Manifesto", we get these kinds of critical, nearly brutal, statements and so much more. If you have anything invested in the Toronto art scene, this piece will certainly interest you; if you don't, it's worth a read anyway, as many of the observations made in this manifesto are universally applicable - such as this note on the importance of recently-graduated artists: "gallerists in New York and Los Angeles keep a keen eye on the goings on of the graduate students that are pumped out every year. Any art scene needs a constant supply of fresh blood, and most gallerists and buyers know exactly where to find it." (Discovered via Sally McKay's blog.)