Task: How are different practitioners ‘curated’ together? What is the overall rationale? Identify and research a real life group exhibition / book chapter you feel your work would fit into. What is the curatorial intent of the exhibition / chapter and why would your work be included in it? How did the critics / reviewers receive the exhibition / book / practice? How do you relate your own practice to the other works included? Why? Could you ‘curate’ your own exhibition / book chapter with other practitioners who have informed your work? What would the rationale be? What connects the work?
Practitioners, when curated together for an exhibition, are often selected as a result of prior research and a series of selection meetings. Normally, the subject examined will have both social significance and be highly topical. There will also always be an underlying theme of commerciality driving choices, which may be either ‘of the moment’ or be deemed to have the potential of attracting a large enough audience to generate profit. There will also be a desire to be seen as on-message, as well as making every effort to ensure a positive reception by art critics.
A great deal of my work to date has been either of the landscapes of Iceland or the streets of London. Two very different subjects and approached differently both in intent and narrative, as well as execution style. One is fine art monochrome, the other (my street work) is highly saturated, backlit and with subjects generally as silhouettes. I believe my street work would more likely chosen, particularly as this has the more relevant and topical narrative. In essence, my images explore the spaces in which we are left by architects in which to work, travel and interact within the city of London. This is becoming increasingly fraught, as public spaces are steadily eaten away by land grabs around major new office buildings.
I can imagine a theme in which urban lifestyle, architecture and congestion are discussed and explored, as a way of highlighting the key issues facing the policy-makers and planners tasked with making London a viable and sustainable city of the future. To ensure the show will be a success, it will have to avoid older cliched tropes of congestion, pollution and poor planning. Instead, it will need to find a way to bring innovation and original thinking to the work and curatorial direction. I would see my current work as showing the diminutive figures of humans dwarfed by the scale of commercial buildings and the loss of community this can engender.
Finally, although I am inexperienced in the task of curation, I believe I would be able to curate a show if the topic was relevant to my own creative and social interests and existing bodies of work.
List of Figures
Figure 1. David Rosen (2022) Granary Square Shadows. Kings Cross
The Photography of David Rosen 