Week 6｜From a Site Visit to Summer hall a Clearer Curatorial Plan: Awareness Through Materials
1) Summerhall group curating: learning from space, not just from ideas
This week, my Jiju group went to Summerhall for a collective curatorial exercise. Working as a group in a real exhibition context made my project feel less like an idea on paper and more like a set of decisions that must survive space, bodies, and time.
At Summer Hall, our discussion quickly moved from taste to structure: sightlines, pacing, and the practical question of how a viewer’s attention is guided. We tested the scale by laying out printed images on the table, then moved to the wall and the floor to simulate placement. The taped rectangle became a simple but powerful tool. It allowed us to translate an artwork from a photograph into an imagined physical footprint, and to notice how quickly an installation can dominate a room or disappear inside it. Measuring together also revealed something important about group work: curating is not only about authorship, but negotiation between people, and between artworks and architecture.
Measuring together: the group used a tape measure to check proportions and circulation, turning a floor plan idea into a physical, walkable scale test.
Jiju group curatorial workshop: we laid out printed images and discussed scale, sequencing, and material relationships before moving into the gallery space.
Testing placement in the room: a taped rectangle on the floor and a small image on the wall helped us visualise footprint, height, and viewing distance.
2) Tutor feedback and revision: narrowing the exhibition into a group show with material logic
Based on feedback from class, I revised my blog and re-focused my proposal. Because we are not allowed to stage a solo exhibition, I rebuilt the project as a group show while keeping my theme of awareness (觉知). I also re-selected two artists whose practices are strongly material-led, and I confirmed a clearer venue choice. The revised exhibition brings together Suyon Huh (Korea), Jiang Miao (China), and Guo Puyi (China), and the site is Exhibition Space at Custom Lane.
What connects these artists for me is not a single style, but a shared commitment to material as a way of thinking. Suyon Huh’s works, using paper, rope, sand, and found communication objects, make “anxiety” and “absence” legible through fragile construction and tension. Jiang Miao’s carved surfaces (acrylic on aluminium or wood) turn the act of looking into a slow, tactile reading; the image is not simply presented, but repeatedly worked through. Guo Puyi’s modular and iterative pieces (including installation views and carving-based forms) emphasise how connection is built, tested, and sometimes fails, through repetition, assembly, and physical contact.
Hi Siqi, overall I can see you are really engaging with curatorial practice and art, good, there is a need to embed research more (independent and connections with course materials).
Week 4: share context wherever you can, eg “Parkview Green in Beijing” what is this, when was it built, a link in references art the end? You refer to Halperin and Hessler, but there are no references: who are they, what, and why do they appear. Also, grammatically the sentence does not have a main point (clause).
In Week 5, more substance is needed in the comments on the collective, eg you mention ethics, add research from course/elsewhere (LO1), link this to greater reflection (LO3) (same for ideas of home). Put curating in a commercial space in critical context of practice (LO2). You can do this, just not produce an event for profit.
In Week 5, how does your approach link to any course materials discussed (eg in relation to accessibility, audience engagement, ethics of openness, the way you frame curation through short texts?). What examples of exhibitions/projects is it aligned with (add LO1 research). Any value-loaded terms, arguments, statements need to be properly explained, eg what is “art jargon”. Your idea is not entirely clear from this very general note on your plan “to make the link between life and making visible”. Great to see your depth of connection to Puyi’s practice (but do not duplicate content, you use Reading week content in the Pitch post): sustain this in your final artist choice. I understand what you mean about not-overtheorising, but again but this in the context of curatorial practice and research on this (eg, going back to Week 1 and 2, do the texts discuss this?). There is no link to Mono-ha: create flow, why are you referencing this? Contextualise curating across materialities and mediums?
You have an extra post titled Curatorial Proposal: this should not be in the final portfolio. I have reviewed it anyway: awareness…do you need this very general idea, by contrast the 3-part thematic is interesting, thoughtful, perhaps a little convolute…hard to tell…more artworks are perhaps needed. Be careful not to tie art to thinking that is too defined. For eg. understand one person’s friction is another person’s companionship? Some very good practical thinking in the production plan, well done. Week 6 post: aim for shorter, clear subheadings in posts, use consistent language in Collective Post, eg Ji Ju in Collective Space, Meeting 1. Summarise the structure, goals and outcomes of the workship more clearly. To be clear, it is not that you are not allowed to have a solo ehxibition, it is the fact that without an extensive programme around this, you cannot attain the breadth of practice/research for the assessment criteria (Los). Make clear y our method of sourcing artists. Your summary of artists’ “shared commitment to material as a way of thinking” is a strong line for your final curatorial text, well done. Some images are still very small: make sure they are formatted in a way that communicated with clarity and impact.
Remember you are looking to summarise, format and elaborate on content in the clearest, most dynamic and consistent way to create strong impact.
we are not allowed to stage a solo exhibition
Include all references at end.
Give all key info where you can, to give context, say who writers are, the Polish curator X in their exhibition text for Y, highlights…
Avoid using formulations such as “this week I learned that curation is xyz) it is like a diary, writing to yourself. Think how can I demonstrate the depth and application of what I have learned?