Reflection of field trip to Glasgow

In a gallery talk in which the audience viewed an exhibition that displayed and reinterpreted the Hunterian Art Gallery’s collection of African art, the curators stated that the purpose of the exhibition was to ‘unpack and mix objects to create an opening to start a new conversation’. This means they are challenging the theme of how African art has been categorised by Western institutions and how it can be understood differently (Hunterian Art Gallery, 2024). Excavating the archive, re-labelling it and bringing it to the exhibition space can provide an opportunity to rethink long-suppressed voices. Mulvey (2011)  states that such archives can frustrate colonial discourse by showing a kind of traditional impression derived from imperialism’s blind spots, but a reality overlooked by its perpetrators. Curating the archive, like the intention of this exhibition, could provide room for new conversations and meanings to fixed discourses and impressions.

Photo taken by the author

Photo taken by the author

Photo taken by the author

My Curatorial Project
Archiving Street Art

My Curatorial project challenges the preservation of street art, which is characterised by its transience, by digitising the archive of street art and posting it online. Street art is a temporary element that constantly changes the appearance of the city and their placement in outdoor public areas can cause them to change and disappear through deterioration, decay or deliberate interventions such as painting, polishing or removal (Hansen, 2018). This makes street art crucial to maintaining its authenticity, and storing archives online could lead to the loss of the original intent of the work. However, online archives, like this temporary street art, are difficult to keep permanently, and we consider this to be another temporary platform. Glaser (2016) describes street art, with its temporary qualities, as a ‘zombie’, and digital archives are at the intersection of life and death and argues that it can inscribe an intermediate stage between destruction and temporary rebirth in a project. The fact that digital archives can be adjusted temporarily or anti-permanently by their providers makes it possible to preserve the transitory qualities of street art without completely erasing them.

References:

Glaser, K. (2016). Notes on the Archive: About Street Art, R Codes and Digital Archiving Practices. Urban Art: Creating the Urban with Art, 56.

Hansen, S. (2018). Heritage protection for street art? The case of Banksy’s Spybooth. Nuart Journal, 1(1), 31-35.

Mulvey, L. (2011). Dislocations: Some Reflections on the Colonial Compilation Film. Film and the End of Empire, 251-261.

Week 7 Achieving/ Field trip in Glasgow / Nozomi Nishiura / Curating (2023-2024)[SEM2] by is licensed under a