Week5#Meeting with EMBASSY and Jake

Part I: What is EMBASSY?

EMBASSY is an artist-led organisation based in Edinburgh that seeks to support early career artists, through the facilitation of exhibitions, commissioning opportunities, events and a public facing programming. EMBASSY was established in 2003 and since then has been run by a rolling non-hierarchical committee.

Part II: What have we talked about?

At the meeting, we were divided into groups according to colours. During the discussion with Jake and the head of EMBASSY, we discussed the sources of funding, the inspiration for the poster design and the layout of the content in the process of curating and preparing the work, as well as the division of labour among each person in the organising team, which provided us with good inspiration and ideas for the final project.

In their exhibitions, part of the funding will come from collectors and investors who collect artworks, and part will come from tickets. Many Scottish artists will participate in their exhibitions and have some art exchange, not only the artworks will be exhibited, but also some after party or reading corner and other workshops, in the process, they will also hold some activities to maintain the membership.

What intrigued me more was how they brought together the work of artists with different themes into one exhibition. The director told me that they would classify the artworks according to the artist’s previous style of creation, similar to an act of labelling, some are about human beings and the environment, some are about emotions, relationships and so on, and they would collect artworks with similar themes according to the categories and rename the whole theme of the exhibition.

I thought the discussion was a good experience and gave me a more comprehensive understanding of the curatorial process.

Part III: About my reflection

I combined this meeting experience with a previous tutorial I had with Jake, where I said to him that I didn’t feel like I could find an artist that fit my subject matter, and after this meeting I thought I needed to change my thinking, I had always used a model of asking for artists and their work, like a homework assignment. I think it should be a model of asking people if they are interested in my project, the subject matter, rather than finding an artist and asking them if they can make an artwork for me according to my requirements, which I think would be very helpful for my final project.

In addition, I also realised that in the curatorial process it is very important to work in a group, because one person cannot do everything, so the members of the group need to divide the work, for example, some people collect the artworks, others do the promotion of the exhibition, media scheduling, others are responsible for the contact of the venue, in the post-execution process also need someone to receive the guests, responsible for the audience experience, guidance, explanation Teamwork is very important in this curatorial task.