Inspired by research, creatively putting theory into practice…the process of conceptualising exhibitions.
Follow me on twitter for more : @jane_french #curatorialdreams
”Ojos de Videotape / ‘Videotape Eyes” by Florencia Muriel, 2009
bruce nauman @tate modern
7 OCTOBER 2020 – 21 FEBRUARY 2021
Bruce Nauman is a restlessly inventive artist. Since the late 1960s he has continually tested what an artwork can be, by reshaping old forms and creating new ones. His ground-breaking works using sound, film, video and neon have influenced generations of artists.
This is the first major exhibition of his work in London in more than 20 years. It allows visitors to engage with the artist’s universe through immersive installations with a strong emphasis on sound and moving image, as well as poetic sculptures and neon pieces.
Major works like Double Steel Cage Piece 1974, Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning) and Clown Torture 1987 highlights Nauman’s distinctive preoccupations and how he incessantly revisits them – yet never repeats himself.
Exhibition organised by Tate Modern and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in collaboration with Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Sunday 6 October 2019
Tomorrow I fly to France to work on some conceptual installation art projects with Laure Prouvost and the team at CAMPfr.
What is this MAGIC by Kathy Hinde?
“There is something poignant about the delicacy of Hinde’s flock of origami birds… Lights rush in perfect harmony with the wash of sound creating a unified sensorial experience.” The Times ****
Luminous Birds animates a flock of origami-style birds suspended overhead. As night falls, synchronised lighting sequences and music create the effect of birds flying overhead. The action of many birds, flocking together, is one of nature’s most amazing phenomenon – an ultimate act of cooperation, hundreds moving together in harmony. Each bird is made from waterproof paper and folded in a traditional origami style. They are arranged in long lines, with the wing positions of each bird slightly different to create a sequence similar to stop-motion animation accompanied by spatialised sounds composed from distorted pianos and bells.
Kathy was awarded a British Composer Award by BASCA for Luminous Birds in 2017, which was described by the judges as ‘an outstanding example of what Sonic Art has to offer today.’
Originally commissioned by Kidderminster Arts Festival 2015, with development and sound commissioned by Cryptic 2016.
Bespoke software programmed by Matthew Olden; DMX control system by Graham Calvert; rigging by Alastair Jones; design, concept and build by Kathy Hinde.
Find out more here: http://kathyhinde.co.uk/luminous-birds/
Laure Prouvost… @la_Biennale… Perhaps I’ll dig a tunnel to the British Pavilion: “Hello, I’m here, I’ve made it!”. #curatorialdreams
Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and Françoise Nyssen, Minister of Culture, on the proposal of a selection committee, have selected Laure Prouvost to represent France at the 58th International Art Biennial Venice will take place from May 11 to November 24, 2019. // Jean-Yves Le Drian, ministre de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, et Françoise Nyssen, ministre de la Culture, sur proposition d’un comité de sélection, ont retenu Laure Prouvost pour représenter la France à la 58e
Biennale internationale d’art de Venise qui se déroulera du 11 mai au 24 novembre 2019.
#curatorialdreams #laureprouvost #france #venicebiennial #labiennaledivenezia
#charlotteprodger #labiennaledivenezia #venicebiennial #newwork #curatorialdreams
Charlotte Prodger has been selected to represent Scotland at the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Commissioned and curated by Linsey Young with Cove Park, Prodger’s presentation will be a major solo exhibition of new work opening on 11 May 2019 and running until 24 November 2019.
Charlotte Prodger works with moving image, sculpture, writing and performance. The commission for Scotland + Venice will provide her with the opportunity to produce a new single channel video work that will build on her sustained exploration of “queer wilderness”. Prodger will develop this new work over a series of research and production residencies at Cove Park, one of Scotland’s foremost residency centres and will be supported by the artist’s production consultant Mason Leaver-Yap. On its return to Scotland the work will tour the Highlands and Islands while Dutch arts organisation If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution, who are supporting the production of the work, will lead on a subsequent international tour.
Discussing the forthcoming work for the Biennale, Charlotte Prodger commented: “Growing up in the rural, agricultural environment of Aberdeenshire as a young person, I understand landscape and queerness as inherently linked. And, as someone who identifies as queer, I’m excited by the fluid borders of identity – especially the perceived edges of gender and geography. The productive crux of this new work is precisely where all these things come into contact with one another.”
Voyage autour de me chambre (1794). Written by Xavier de Maistre while under arrest in Turin as the consequence of a duel… “I undertook and executed a forty-two day trip around my room. The interesting observations I made, and the continual pleasure I felt along the way, made me wish to make it public; the certainty of being useful has made me decide.“
CHAPTER II
I could begin praising my trip by saying that it cost me nothing; this article deserves attention. Here it is first preached, celebrated by people of a mediocre fortune; he is another class of men with whom he is even more sure of a happy success, for the same reason that it costs nothing. – With whom? And what ! you ask? It’s with rich people. Besides, what resource is this way of traveling for the sick? They will not have to fear the inclemency of the air and the seasons. – For cowards, they will be safe from thieves; they will meet neither precipices nor potholes. Thousands of people who had not dared before me, others who had not been able to, others who had not thought of traveling, will do it by my example. Would the most indolent being hesitate to set out with me to obtain a pleasure that will not cost him either trouble or money? – Courage so, let’s go. “Follow me, all of you, that a mortification of love, a negligence of friendship, keep you in your apartment, far from the smallness and perfidy of men. May all the unfortunate, the sick and the bored of the universe follow me! – Let all lazy people get up in droves! “And you who roll in your mind sinister projects of reform or retreat for some infidelity; you who, in a boudoir, renounce the world for life; kind anchorites of an evening, come also: leave, believe me, these black ideas; you lose a moment for pleasure without gaining one for wisdom: deign to accompany me on my journey; we will march in short days, laughing along the road, travelers who have seen Rome and Paris; – no obstacle can stop us; and, yielding ourselves gaily to our imagination, we will follow her wherever she chooses to lead us.
CHAPITRE II
Je pourrais commencer l’éloge de mon voyage par dire qu’il ne m’a rien coûté ; cet article mérite attention. Le voilà d’abord prôné, fêté par les gens d’une fortune médiocre ; il est une autre classe d’hommes auprès de laquelle il est encore plus sûr d’un heureux succès, par cette même raison qu’il ne coûte rien. – Auprès de qui donc ? Et quoi ! vous le demandez ? C’est auprès des gens riches. D’ailleurs de quelle ressource cette manière de voyager n’est-elle pas pour les malades ? Ils n’auront point à craindre l’intempérie de l’air et des saisons. – Pour les poltrons, ils seront à l’abri des voleurs ; ils ne rencontreront ni précipices ni fondrières. Des milliers de personnes qui avant moi n’avaient point osé, d’autres qui n’avaient pu, d’autres enfin qui n’avaient pas songé à voyager, vont s’y résoudre à mon exemple. L’être le plus indolent hésiterait-il à se mettre en route avec moi pour se procurer un plaisir qui ne lui coûtera ni peine ni argent ? – Courage donc, partons. – Suivez-moi, vous tous qu’une mortification de l’amour, une négligence de l’amitié, retiennent dans votre appartement, loin de la petitesse et de la perfidie des hommes. Que tous les malheureux, les malades et les ennuyés de l’univers me suivent ! – Que tous les paresseux se lèvent en masse ! – Et vous qui roulez dans votre esprit des projets sinistres de réforme ou de retraite pour quelque infidélité ; vous qui, dans un boudoir, renoncez au monde pour la vie ; aimables anachorètes d’une soirée, venez aussi : quittez, croyez-moi, ces noires idées ; vous perdez un instant pour le plaisir sans en gagner un pour la sagesse : daignez m’accompagner dans mon voyage ; nous marcherons à petites journées, en riant, le long du chemin, des voyageurs qui ont vu Rome et Paris ; – aucun obstacle ne pourra nous arrêter ; et, nous livrant gaîment à notre imagination, nous la suivrons partout où il lui plaira de nous conduire.
Ruth Hadlow – an Australian artist with a process-based practice, incorporating temporal wall-drawings and installations, writing, performative lectures and artist’s books. She is well-known for her freelance teaching which is focused on conceptual development for contemporary art practice. ruthhadlow@gmail.com
Ruth also runs salon, a program of experimental and intimate performative readings, lectures and presentations in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. A platform which supports nascent and experimental work and ideas, providing artists and writers with the opportunity to present new work to new audiences, with the intention of facilitating dialogue and useful critical feedback around the work. A space where artists are encouraged to experiment with presenting ideas in intimate and/or experimental ways, explore ways of expanding practice, and receive attentive feedback and critically-engaged responses. A program set up to support and encourage artists to engage in writing, and to experiment with performing their writing creatively.
14/10/18 Let us create:
\salon, a program of experimental and intimate performative readings, lectures and presentations in Bath.
\salon is a platform which supports new and experimental work and ideas, providing postgraduate Bath School of Art students with the opportunity to present new work to new audiences, with the intention of facilitating dialogue and useful critical feedback around the work.
\salon is a space where you are encouraged to experiment with presenting ideas in intimate and/or experimental ways, explore ways of expanding practice, and receive attentive feedback and critically-engaged responses.
\salon is a program set up to support and encourage you to engage in writing, and to experiment with performing your writing creatively.
The last container exhibition opened 06/10/18. Head to Watchet harbour and catch artist Chris Dobrowlski’s remarkable and playful show – that reflects on the gallery’s history and it’s possible future #shippingcontainer #lastexhibition #newbeginning
it’s a tragedy, presented with Lisson Gallery and featuring Marie Vasconi
#LaureProuvost : Live 2018 (FRIEZE FAIRS – 04 OCT 2018)
An opera singer performs fragments of conversations overheard at the fair, from everyday remarks to discussions on art. Exposing and fictionalizing intimate conversation, Prouvost ironically comments on an age where personal data and operations of the art world are under increasing scrutiny.
((Visitors to one of the world’s most important art fairs may want to be careful what they say to their friends this year: the conversations could be repeated in public by an opera singer. The Turner prize-winning artist Laure Prouvost will present a live work at Frieze London that will explore and comment on the increasing scrutiny of personal data. Diana Campbell Betancourt, the curator of this year’s Frieze Projects, said Prouvost would work with an opera singer “overhearing intimate conversations and performing these in an outburst of song in different places throughout the fair”. – Mark Brown, Guardian Arts correspondent. ))
Prouvost combines existing and imagined memories with artistic and literary references, to create artworks that twist fiction and reality.
About Live at Frieze London 2018
Live is a platform for interactive installations and performances, presented by galleries.
Curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt (Samdani Art Foundation/Dhaka Art Summit), this year’s programme is entitled “Control ~” (“Control Tilde”) – a command on a computer keyboard that unlocks all formulas in a spreadsheet and thus makes them visible. Visitors will encounter works by international artists, drawing attention to unexpected connections and hidden formulas which impact wider social, political and economic realities.
Len Lye… #experimentalfilm
‘Experimental films use innovative strategies to represent time, images and ideas. This differs from traditional short and feature films, which usually work with conventional narratives and character-led drama.’ – Mark Williams
Len Lye. Born in New Zealand in 1901, Lye was a pioneer of direct-to-film animation, using paint, ink and tools to draw on the surface of 16mm film.
One of his best-known works was Tusalava (1929), an animated black and white film that embodied Lye’s unique combination of theory and practice. Showing the dramatic evolution of a cellular creature, Tusalava combined Lye’s ideas about the creative subconscious with the painstaking labour of making 4,400 individual drawings for a nine-minute film.
In later works such as Tal Farlow (1980) and Free radicals (1957) soundtracks of modern jazz and African drumming complemented the kinetic physicality and energy of Lye’s dashes, scratches and lines.
1935-1937 Len Lye – “Kaleidoscope” + “A Colour Box” + “Colour Flight” (highlights mix)
#inspiration
#Scanner (British artist Robin Rimbaud) traverses the experimental terrain between sound and space connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.
I am excited to have seen this on his site and it is a boost for me as I am curating a media wall installation in 2019. #curatorialdreams
Four Words Technology Tech Hub Leeds UK 23 November 2017 – 28 February 2018
Four Words Technology
Tech Hub Leeds UK
23 November 2017 – 28 February 2018
Some scientists believe that at the foundation of our ‘reality’ might in fact be numbers and, if so, the likelihood they suggest is that it will be the number four. FOUR WORDS: TECHNOLOGY brings together professionals and visual art students from Leeds Beckett University to think about our broader relationship with technology in only four words, each animated over thirty seconds to an exclusive soundtrack that Scanner composed for the work. The work is presented on the 9m-high Media Wall in the Platform Building that houses the new Leeds Tech Hub.
#OdArtsFestival is a new contemporary arts festival in rural Somerset.
The festival takes its name from the Od: a crooked stream that meanders through the neighbouring villages of East and West Coker. Over one weekend in May, Od Arts Festival will weave a journey through past, present and future rivalries, exploring artistic, romantic and neighbourly frictions. Led by Coker-based OSR Projects, Od Arts Festival 2018 will include multi-site curated exhibitions, new commissions, and participatory projects by artist-led groups.
Venues, public spaces and the landscape will become the sites for making and sharing of contemporary art, performance, music, discussions and workshops, each playfully addressing themes of animosity, conflict and skepticism.
Eager to see more from… ANDY PARKER. I love his pieces with lightbulbs… see below and I look forward to seeing what he contributes to Od Arts Festival 2018.
Installation view, Andy Parker, Sies + Hoeke, 2009 Turtles (i-v), 2009 Lightbulbs, wood, paint, chain and electrical fittings 250 x 20 x 12 cm per unit
Lighting & Electrical, 2007 (detail) Lightbulbs, wood, paint, chain and electrical fittings 250 x 20 x 12 cm
15/04/18 >>> I have only just *slaps face* stumbled across Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (BEEF) and I fear I have been drawn into a black-hole of artists and sounds and films I may never escape from. One golden thread I followed was from this past event notice and led me to this amazing earworm: http://www.nachleben.org.uk/skomer/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/LIGHTS-MIX-small_300k.ogv?_=4
BEEF is a film and sound collective supporting experimental practice in Bristol : H+H+M LIGHT SHOW : Saturday 24th February : Hacked slide projectors, 16mm/35mm film projectors, episcopes and OHPS are harnessed to create a cosmic analogue light show. Sounds emanating from the light leaking contraptions will be woven into an expansive soundscape. Presented by artists Graeme Hogg, David Hopkinson and Rod Maclachlan.
Predestination 02/12/17
I have stumbled across the artist Minjung Kim and her series ‘Predestination’. Kim’s recent works, a series of singed rice paper rosettes that form constellations on open, hand-made paper fields, deal with the theme of predestination. “Each moment of ourselves is always predestined,” she explained, “it is as if it is already designed.”
Detail of an image from Minjung Kim’s “Predestination” series
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/minjung-kim-predestinatio_b_1895176.html?ref=topbar
#SiteSpecific
The term site-specific refers to a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an interrelationship with the location… As a site-specific work of art is designed for a specific location, if removed from that location it loses all or a substantial part of its meaning. The term site-specific is often used in relation to installation art, as in site-specific installation; and land art is site-specific almost by definition. – TATE (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/site-specific)
Line
22 January – 12 March 2016
Drawing is both physical entity and intellectual proposition in ‘Line’, Lisson Gallery’s group exhibition, guest-curated by Drawing Room. Fifteen international artists – whose works span seminal artworks from the late ’60s through to performative and site-specific pieces made especially for this exhibition – take their various lines for a walk off the page to intermingle in the three-dimensional space of the gallery, extending via sound into the atmosphere and reverberating via action and memory across time.
http://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/line
Tom Marioni, One Second Sculpture, 1969 Black and white photograph Dimensions variable © Tom Marioni
#CultureDesk
Installation view: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 6, 2017–January 7, 2018. Photo: David Heald
The Guggenheim’s Controversial “Art and China After 1989,” and Other Shows to See This Weekend By Andrea K. Scott on October 6, 2017
#ArtRadar
Art Radar brings you 10 magazines for art curators…
- Curator: The Museum Journal
- cura. (based in Rome, Italy)
- The Artist as Curator
- On Curating (published in Switzerland)
- Journal of Curatorial Studies
- Red Hook (Bard College, NY)
- The Exhibitionist
- Exhibitionist
- Art & the Public Sphere
- Manifesta Journal
artradarjournal.com/2015/01/09/10-art-magazines-for-curators/
#FlowerArt
Rebecca Louise Law: Life in Death // Through a mailing list, I have just heard that the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens, are showing an artwork by installation artist Rebecca Louise Law until March 2018. The Kew website explains how ‘the exhibition Life in Death showcases her personal collection of plants and flowers, dried and preserved over a six year period. It is her most intricate large-scale artwork to date and examines our relationship with flowers and plants and how they are used, particularly through rituals.’ How is an installation like this conceived and curated?
https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/rebecca-louise-law-life-in-death
#EarthRoom
I have just read in the Paris Review from 2 November 2017 by Kyle Chayka (a writer living in Brooklyn), of ‘The New York Earth Room’ in Wooster Street, SoHo, New York. Created in 1977 by Walter De Maria. The work was supposed to only be on display for 3 months, but it has now just celebrated its fortieth year and is supported by the Dia Foundation, NY.
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/02/the-un-changing-ever-changing-earth-room/
Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977. Installation view, New York.
The installation (an interior earth sculpture) is housed in a second-floor loft space and is comprised of:
250 cubic yards of earth (197 cubic meters)
3,600 square feet of floor space (335 square meters)
22 inch depth of material (56 centimeters)
Total weight of sculpture: 280,000 lbs. (127,300 kilos)
Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977. © The Estate of Walter De Maria. Photo: John Cliett
https://diaart.org/visit/visit/walter-de-maria-the-new-york-earth-room-new-york-united-states
#Reading
Tate Research Publications ‘Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions’ by John Rajchman. Tate Papers no. 12 Autmn 2009, Landmark Exhibitions Issue. ISSN 1753-9854. http://www.tate.org.uk/publications/tate-papers/12/les-immateriaux-or-how-to-construct-the-history-of-exhibitions, accessed 26 October 2017
#Galleries
I have visited eight exhibitions in the last 30 days. From virtual reality, to audiovisual installation, manipulated photographs, anthropology collections, group exhibitions and a retrospective. Do I have exhibition overload? 04/11/2017
Hoare, A.J. (2017) Photograph of the ground floor court of Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Unpublished Photograph.
#SoundArt
I am listening to Music Matters on BBC 3 and heard an interview with Bill Fontana.
Fontana is a sound art pioneer. If art at the beginning of the twenty-first century is often about ways of seeing, Fontana asks if we have ways of hearing. – @BillFontana
You can listen to Sonic Mappings here.
I began to think about how sound is represented as art, and how it can be captured and injected into the gallery space. The earworms of that interview, of standing in a dovecote listening to the wind coming through at all directions, the birds, of closing my eyes as I sit in my house, listening to this sound, completely detached yet involved, will not leave me this afternoon.
Do you have any thoughts on #soundart in galleries and museums? Get in touch.
UPDATE: BBCRadio 3 are currently playing a recording of frogs captured in Panama. 18/06/2017 8.31am #SoundArt #SoundsOfTheEarth
#GuerrillaGardening
Is this art? Can the act of the act of gardening on land that gardeners do not have legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, be classed as an art form? But what of creating a space, in which to allow things to grow naturally. A conceptual art piece. I think it provokes a new set of questions.
This idea was considered by Robin Lane Fox for the FT in 2015 when discussing the Tate Modern’s exhibition Empty Lot by conceptual artist Abraham Cruzvillegas which ran from 13 October 2015 – 3 April 2016, in which a large geometric sculpture was created using scaffolding, a grid of triangular wooden planters, and soil collected from parks across London including Peckham, Haringey and Westminster. Nothing was to be planted in the soil, but yet it was to be lit by lamps and watered throughout the six month display. He explains that visitors were being encouraged to make “Empty Lot” less empty by doing some guerrilla gardening of their own. I have questions about this. How is it seed-bombing or guerrilla gardening when it is by invitation, and what is this conceptual piece really about?
I was trying to propose a question: Who am I? Which is a very dangerous question because it normally leads you to think about genealogy about history, geography, politics, migration, and economics and so on. So I arrived at this very simple thing, maybe I am an empty lot because of what it represents and what it means, in my own experience of course. There will be someone watering the earth, who is not a gardener, so if something grows they will not be gardening, just providing the minimum for something to grow: light and warmth. It’s not that I’m hoping that something will happen, I’m hoping that it’s continuous; the size of the Turbine Hall is so impressive because of the scale, but the real drama is microscopic. – Abraham Cruvillegas
This living city of weeds is one of the most exciting works to take over the Turbine Hall – The Telegraph
An interesting piece, and one I would like to see a time-lapse of. #howdoesyourgardengrow
Reflections on Curation 