Week 6: Curatorial Analysis- Corpse Flower
Introduction
Corpse Flower was an exhibition held by the contemporary art practice students from the Edinburgh College of Art as a pop-up exhibition. Hosted between the hours of 1 – 3pm on 27th of February at the Edinburgh Botanical Garden’s Inverleigh House exhibition space.
Initial Impressions and Field Notes
While walking through this exhibition one of the first things that I noticed was a lack of gallery labels for some pieces. I thought that this was an interesting decision, and (having been to exhibitions at this space before) not typical for an exhibition. I believe that this may have been because it was a limited duration exhibition, as a result, many of the artists were at the location offering in depth conversation about the art on display. However, there were pieces that I was not able to gain information about. I found that the lack of exhibition prosthetic in these cases perceptually inhibited my appreciation of these exhibition pieces, especially when the presented messages of the work were engaging in contextual or theoretical references.
Theoretical Analysis
Through conversation with the artists I discovered that pieces were specifically made as a site responsive exercise to the Inverleigh House space within the Botanical Gardens. Hence, many of the conceptual themes associated with ecology and climate change were not representative of the artist’s dominant art practice. This, along with collective curation of the space, meant that there was no discernible overarching exhibition narrative. Instead, the artists arranged the space based on aesthetic experience and physical constraints that limited the artwork to specific locations (such as proximity to plug socket for tech-reliant work). Like the issues raised in response to my week 6 curatorial presentation, the range of artwork, and the broad framing of theme, relating to climate crisis, makes this exhibition exist without a central compelling message. The objective appeared puzzled and caught between the presented climate change/ecological theme and the course requirement, some pieces engaged more with the Botanical Gardens than the advertised theme. Despite this, I don’t think that the Corpse Flower exhibition needed to focus on this element in the same way that my speculative exhibition compels. This comes down to the framing of the exhibition. The Corpse Flower project is expressed as a student exhibition, pertaining to a course requirement, therefore, the selectivity of artists cannot be looked at with the same critical eye that my curatorial project invites.
Application to Individual Speculative Project
In observing this exhibition, I have decided that the framing of my curatorial project is especially important. While Corpse Flower did not have the unified theme or narrative that is associated with typical contemporary art exhibitions, I believe that this was acceptable because it was transparently framed a student exhibition, hence, the audience has a particular mitigated expectation for the artistic experience. Continuing from this I will narrow my theme, to direct audience engagement to my anticipated outcome. Additionally, a clearly focused theme should be presented to the audience prior to entering the exhibition. In my original Week 6 presentation I pitched the name ‘Fabulation’ in response to the multiple narratives that I hoped to incorporate into the Project. However, ‘Fabulation’ communicates very little to an audience and does nothing to focus the engaged public to the curatorial theme. Recentring my title around the term ‘Friction’ may refocus my proposed exhibition in a way that resolves the thematic issues that were questioned in presentation feedback.
