Curatorial Project 

Theme

You have a strong sense of theme, focusing on curatorial projects that present women’s issues through Chinese female artists, with effective theory to support your thematic development. Jerry Saltz argues that the art market is not favorable to female artists, as art is seen as an investment created by men, resulting in the market value of female artists’s artworks being underestimated (Reilly, 2019). Incorporating this perspective helps to strengthen the purpose of the theme.

Artists

You have gradually developed the main framework of your curatorial project through fieldwork, reflective mapping from female-themed artworks to personal thoughts on selecting artists and works. Adjusting from your initial selection of four female artists (well-known with large-scale exhibitions) to three young female artists, and reducing the number of artworks from eight to three, demonstrates your critical thinking as an emerging curator in response to project feasibility. The next step would be to seek ethical issues in exhibitions and operations related to audience experience, collaboration interests, and transparency of information about exhibitions.

Platform

You learned from Terry Smith that digital virtual exhibitions have become a trend. You have used screening and seminars throughout your curatorial project, which is a good choice. Review the lecture ‘Media and Time’ by Markus Jack in week 8, noting that video projection started in 1989, which is relatively recent in history. Your exhibition is therefore placed within a contemporary discourse, you need to consider the work of the artists you have chosen, and whether their original form of exhibition is compatible with this form. Chrissie Iles illustrates how to give a film a fair chance to be shown to the audience, the problem is not a matter of place, but of time, the film shown constantly can greatly increase the chance of being seen, appreciated, and understood (Balsom, 2013), which helps in thinking how you should time and space your video projection.

Space

Sett Studios in Edinburgh serves as a platform for artists to provide an economically accessible and safe creative space, making art accessible to the public and elevating the voices of marginalised groups. In line with your women’s themed exhibition, your critical thinking about viability in terms of site selection has been a significant step forward for your curatorial project. Yet, are you aware of cases where the site has worked with other emerging curators? What kind of audience do you want to engage? Additionally, you mentioned brochures as a way for viewers to extract information, and in this week’s lecture, ‘Publishing as artistic practice’ is not only a record of information but also a reflection on the exhibition (Gilbert, 2016). For a three-day flash exhibition, incorporating publications as research into the development of your art curatorial practice may be helpful for audience to access more information due to its short duration. Furthermore, mapping out of a rough budget can provide feedback on your ideas in this project.

Bibligraphy

Erika Balsom et al., “Thoughts About Curating Moving Images,” Mousse 38, April 2013.

Gilbert, Anne. (2016) ‘Publishing as artistic practice’, Sternbery, pp. 7-39.

Huang, C.Y. and Chiang, L. (2007) ‘Learning ethics from museum exhibitions: Possible or impossible?’, Ethics & Behavior, 17(4), pp.367-386. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1080/10508420701519528.

Martinon, Jean-Paul. (2020) ‘Curating as Ethics’, JSTOR, 41(3), pp. Vii-xxiv. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvtv93bw.3.

Reilly, M. (2019) Curatorial activism towards an ethics of curating. London: Thames & Hudson.