Talbot Rice Gallery is the public art gallery of the University of Edinburgh
I think there’s a big difference between a one-person show and a group show. The big difference is that if you work with an artist and do an exhibition, your real job is to support their vision, support their practice and give them the strongest possible voice. I realize that artists enjoy the whole process. When you’re doing a group show or a big coalition of artists, you can imagine a group situation where no one has the power to take over all the space. But you still try to make sure that each artist has their own space to feel that their work is respected and displayed in the best possible way. ‘Pine’, for example, is a group exhibition.
I was thinking about how you can also have to be brave to plan ambitious projects. I found that you have to have a lot of emotional intelligence to deal with many different people and convince them that you are good at what you do. Because no one will give you money unless they are very confident in your work, when you start designing a project and then put it out into the world, you can get into trouble very quickly. It’s more about interfaces that integrate the real world’s people, problems, and complexities.
Openness. To me, when you do a group show, you want to have a lot of different ideas that the audience can get lost in and find new perspectives, and I think what I’m trying to describe to you here is the way I feel I design an exhibition. I understand that as a curator, you have to learn to respect the practice of visual art. The artworks need to produce a unique ‘voice’, they want the viewer to keep coming back and each time find something new, and the work is rich and corporate and thought-provoking.
I think it’s essential to keep our mindset and explore things from different angles. Try to dig into the project from lots of different angles. And look at as much material as possible, for example, reading material. Think about things from a historical perspective and a political perspective. Once you get a handle on what really interests you as a person, make sure you read it properly to let it grow and expand as you begin to adopt these methods and the fact that you have this creative vision.
