Curation ~ The skill and specialism of display.

Now that Longhill High School has a gallery there is a clear need to develop the skills and expertise required to make the most of it.

During the course of discussions with Lisa Finch at Fabrica it was decided to form a project in collaboration with LCP (Landscape Cities People) - a project that would allow students from Longhill to gain from Fabrica’s expertise as a successful international gallery.

For me this was a defining moment, we had wandered into the field of the curator and I suddenly realised that I had never heard of the subject being dealt with in school at all.
We would all be surprised if a school didn’t do ‘Art’ but we often take it to mean ‘making’ - when you consider that potentially more people make a living from curation, in one form or another, than do through making art, it seemed amazing that this seemed so radical.

As is always the case when you can suddenly see the whole picture, the birth of curator workshops in school seems like a necessity, rather than an experiment (perhaps for staff too).

Two initial workshops were arranged at Fabrica, to test the water with the students involved in the original discovery.
We were incredibly lucky to have stumbled across the notion of exploring curatorial skills at the same time as the photo biennial here in Brighton – even more so because Fabrica, our partner was host to an exhibition curated by Martin Parr the photographer called ‘House of the Vernacular’.

The exhibition consists of seven collections of vernacular photographs housed in a constructed environment of seven theatrically themed rooms. Each of the collections has a common subject or function, such as commercial images of litter bins, men wearing hats in Bogota, or dictators private jet interiors. In addition each collection has originated from outside of the ‘Art Photograph’ industry, some are found snapshots, some studio work, others collected for publication.

Being at Fabrica the exhibition has been wonderfully supported with all sorts of investigations, discussions and related events, the staff and volunteers continually discuss aspects of the show, exploring with professional interest (it is an artist led gallery)  - against this background I felt more than confident that we could approach ideas of curation with an open mind and let the students find the meat of the subject.

Reposted from Exegesis | Art, location & Culture

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