Curatorial pitch
This is the link of my presentation of the individual curatorial project.
https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/Kaltura+Capture+recording+-+February+17th+2023%2C+2A20A38+pm/1_c7iwqnpf
I want to curate an exhibition of contemporary ink painting, because I studied fine art in undergraduate, most of our courses are practices, and also a few theories. I am interested in contemporary Chinese painting, and I have done many ink painting practices in both traditional and contemporary forms. I think my previous knowledge and experience can be helpful for the curation.
The development of contemporary art has had a huge impact on any art discipline and genre; the overall high degree of Westernization has also allowed Western vision and concepts to enter Eastern academic system strongly. In today’s education system, not to mention the comprehensive Western-style art education methods and subjects, more attention should be paid to the impact on ink painting, calligraphy, and seal cutting with traditional history.
The performances of many contemporary ink paintings that people see today mainly focus on two parts. First, in terms of content, the dialectical approach to contemporary art issues is used to intervene in ink painting; second, the visual interest of creative materials and textures is redeveloped.
The former completely abandons the ink painting tradition of mind cultivation and metaphysics, and adopts the same conceptual techniques as contemporary art to respond to current, life, social, environmental and globalization-related issues. This kind of topical expression, in the form of graphic creation, can often be presented with many visual collage techniques.
In terms of expressing visual interest, contemporary ink paintings artists depart from traditional brush and ink, seek more experiments in materials, and naturally show more interesting changes in the texture of the plane. The “cross-field” mixed use of contemporary media that breaks the barriers of media has also played a good role in the development of contemporary ink.
Originally, I wanted to hold a physical exhibition in the space in campus to promote it to the local people in Edinburgh. But since I don’t have physical works around me that can be exhibited, the way and funds to transport the artworks will be difficult for me. So I currently want to adopt an online exhibition method, which is more affordable for me. I will need to create a web page for the exhibition to show artworks and information. Therefore, the viewers of my exhibition will change from local people to people from all over the world. I hope to promote contemporary ink painting to more people through the exhibition.
Hi Jing-Ting, this is a well-prepared presentation, you clearly outline your plan for an online exhibition of contemporary ink painting. It’s interesting to hear more about your background in Fine Art. Your slides contain some engaging images that help draw the viewer in: remember to caption all images so we know who and what we are looking at.
Learning Outcome #1. Research: Identify, engage with, and apply a range of contemporary curatorial methods, practices and theories relevant to the commissioning, production, dissemination and archiving of cultural practices.
You make interesting references to your art theory and art history research, but it is important to add references (and short quotes/summaries) to support your comments (eg around ‘westernisations’, what you mean by ‘dialectical approach’). You mention globalisation also, so think how you could draw content from the course materials in here (this was a key theme with care and criticality in my week 1 Tuesday introduction). The idea of the contemporary and the historical could be further looked into, researching curatorial texts on this (art journals, online portals such as e-flux), including content from the course readings so far that explore these topics.
Learning Outcome #2: Practice: Working with your peers, commission, produce, disseminate and archive cultural practices, locating your approach in relation to the expanded field of contemporary curatorial theory and practice.
I understand the shift from an offline to an online exhibition is more feasible. I’d like to hear more about how you plan to curate this (find the artists from recent exhibitions, making sure you have permissions, include your own work as well, look for students?, or?), what software/platform you plan to use to create your gallery experience: my extra lectures give suggestions about this. Have you thought about how you can use real-world posters or other physical ephemera to signpost your exhibition? Have you thought about extra activities, what is called ‘Public Programme’, around your project, eg a curator’s talk? Let’s talk about it more in our Week 6 group chat, please come with any questions.