Week: 9 – Peer Review Summative Assessment 3
Xinyao Tong: Peer Review
Ethics + Theme:
You have a strong sense of theme that focuses on the development of your curatorial practice, which deepens as you define an exhibition purpose, creating an escape from the stress of the real world to supplement your theme and develop a dream exhibition experience. This new consideration contributes to the ethical implications of your exhibition. I recently read the article Learning to Say No: The Ethics of Artist-Curator Relationships by Mirjami Schuppert, who divides curatorial ethics into two forms: perceived ethics and operative ethics. By focusing on providing the audience with a positive experience, your project engages with the former form of perceived ethics as it serves some sort of duty to the public. The next step would be looking to operative ethics, which involves the consideration of appropriate collaborator payment and professional institutional conduct. Additionally, the direction towards an escape for the audience shifts your project towards a more viewer-centric, participatory conception that matches the form of medium engagement that you propose with virtual reality and technologically engaging artworks. To further fulfil LO1 and situate your practice within contemporary curation theory, you could refer to Terry Smith’s Mapping the Contexts of Contemporary Curating (2017), from our week 2 essential reading, where he identifies participatory curation in the Historical Display Formats diagram.
Space:
With a new exhibition goal, you may also be able to make your location site-responsive. Focusing on the idea of escape from a stressful life, you may choose a space that is in a city centre, with a high population of workers. Additionally, Franěk, M., et al., in Eye movements in viewing urban images and natural images in diverse vegetation periods (2019), and Simone Grassini, et al., in the article Processing of natural scenery is associated with lower attentional and cognitive load compared with urban ones, discuss how the perception of urban spaces can be deemed cognitively burdensome to process. Therefore, locating your project in an urban location could give your project a greater effect, offering a point of contrast from the experience for the city-dwelling audience. Further, as you are proposing an immersive exhibition, you might want to consider the effect of multiple senses on the perception of the artworks involved. Museums and the Embodied Mind: Sensory Engagement with Artworks and Architecture is an article I found helpful in thinking through how sound or tactile work could be used to make a more encompassing exhibition experience.
Medium:
You have connected the conceptual and aesthetic qualities of technological art in creating a hyper-reality back to your dream theme. Markus Jack mentioned in his week 8 media and time lecture that video art is a relatively new medium, only recently achieving prevalence as an artistic device in the 1970s and does not have the same history as other more traditional media. Your work becomes situated within contemporary discourse, but as your project is media-specific, research into the curatorial development of video and digital media may be helpful (I have included some articles below). Visiting, or analysing, some contemporary exhibitions that display this form of work may be useful and develop further contextualization for LO1.
Source List:
- Franěk, M., et al., (2019). Eye movements in viewing urban images and natural images in diverse vegetation periods. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 46,126477, pp.1-8.
- Grassini, S., et al., (2019). Processing of natural scenery is associated with lower attentional and cognitive load compared with urban ones. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 62, pp.1–11.
- Lan, K. (2023). From Galleries to Virtual Reality: Tracing the Evolution of Art Curation Practices. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research/Advances in social science, education and humanities research, pp.1113–1119.
- Lopes, R.O. (2020). Museum Curation in the Digital Age. In: G. Hearn, ed., The Future of Creative Work. Queensland University, pp.123–139.
- Access Link: (PDF) Museum curation in the digital age
- Schuppert, M. (2021). Learning to Say No, the Ethics of Artist-Curator Relationships. Philosophies, 6(1), pp.1-13.
- Smith, B.C. (2020). Museums and the Embodied Mind: Sensory Engagement with Artworks and Architecture. Architectural Design, 90(6), pp.88–93.
- Smith, T. (2017). Mapping the Contexts of Contemporary Curating: The Visual Arts Exhibitionary Complex. Journal of Curatorial Studies, 6(2), pp.170–180.
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Here’s a peer review I wrote for you~
This is a compelling exhibition project! Friction: Perspectives of Ecology explores ecological narratives across three temporal phases – past, present, and future – emphasising the productive tensions that arise when multiple ecological perspectives intersect.
Theme
In terms of theoretical research and curatorial framework, you have effectively integrated posthumanist and ecological theory, drawing on the ideas of Donna Haraway and Timothy Morton to challenge linear narratives and resist a singular historical trajectory. Moreover, the exhibition demonstrates a thoughtful engagement with emotional responses to ecological crisis. Charlotte Alexander’s archival practice presents ecological loss through the lens of personal mourning, resonating with Morton’s concept of the “uncanny” — the estrangement brought about by the erasure of the non-human “other” in nature. This reveals the emotional dimensions of ecological discourse. However, it is important to remain cautious of over-aestheticising ecological catastrophe. For example, in the “Present” section, exhibiting only Wickett’s work — which contrasts destruction and fungal regeneration through burnt ash — might risk reducing the audience’s engagement to visual spectacle alone, thereby weakening the critical potency of the theme.
Selection of Works
At present, the exhibition features three artists whose works are representative and fall within the curatorial budget. However, due to the limited number of works and a lack of detailed archival context, the exhibition may fall short in fully articulating the temporal intersections and “frictions” it seeks to explore. I suggest including one or two additional works within budget and enhancing the documentation of the exhibited pieces. One strong recommendation is Vietnamese artist Duong Thuy Nguyen’s video installation Unnamed Land (2022), which uses elements such as water pipes and broken folding screens to evoke a sense of urgency, highlighting the direct impact of climate disasters on human vitality and health. The work aligns closely with the exhibition’s emotional engagement with ecological crisis, and would also expand regional diversity and deepen intermedial dialogue within the exhibition.
Exhibition Space
Your choice of Strange Field — a venue with an open spatial structure and ample natural lighting — is well suited to facilitating discourse around ecological themes. In terms of accessibility, your use of resources such as Ambitious about Autism and Scottish Disability Information reflects an inclusive curatorial ethos. I recommend referring to Hughes’ Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design to further enhance the exhibition’s accessibility. This could include the development of online audio archives, the incorporation of tactile materials, and the addition of multisensory interactive installations, thereby ensuring accessibility on both digital and sensory levels.
Summary of Suggestions for Further Development
1.Avoid over-aestheticising ecological crisis; maintain a balance between visual impact and critical ecological discourse.
2.Consider expanding the artist list and artwork selection to strengthen structural, regional, and media diversity.
3.Further optimise accessibility through digital and sensory-inclusive design strategies.
Reference：
Clark, Samantha. “Strange Strangers and Uncanny Hammers: Morton’sThe Ecological Thoughtand the Phenomenological Tradition.” Green Letters 17, no. 2 (June 2013): 98–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2013.800339.
Hughes, Philip. “Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design.” In Exhibition Design Second Edition. United Kingdom: Laurence King Publishing, 2015.
Morton, Timothy. Being Ecological. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Mit Press, Copyright, 2018.
Qiutong, Zhai. “Duong Thuy Nguyen.” Art & Market, May 27, 2022. https://artandmarket.net/profiles/2022/5/30/duong-thuy-nguyen.
———. “Fresh Faces: Duong Thuy Nguyen.” Art & Market, May 27, 2022. https://artandmarket.net/dialogues/2022/5/30/fresh-faces-duong-thuy-nguyen.
Salberg, Daniel, Robert Stewart, Karla Wesley, and Shannon Weiss. “Postmodernism and Its Critics.” Anthropology, April 24, 2017. https://anthropology.ua.edu/theory/postmodernism-and-its-critics/.