Contemporary Art Exhibition Research Articles

Everyday Partitions

This article analyses two exhibitions of contemporary South Asian art ‘My East is Your West’ (Palazzo Benzon, Venice, 2015) and ‘This Night-Bitten Dawn’ (24 Jor Bagh, New Delhi, 2016) that took up Partition as an everyday effect rather than a historical event. Departing from the national art survey model that has dominated museum and international exhibition venues such as the Venice Biennale since the early 2000s, both exhibitions focused on the complex afterlives of the Partition of 1947 and highlighted its recursive character. In so doing, they presented a critique of contemporary nationalism and globalisation through the trope of Partition, enacting what Gayatri C Spivak has called a critical regionalism against ‘identitarianism’. This regionalism is not a regional style, but an analytic mode, critical stance, and historically-informed approach to the region and its borders, nations and partitions. ‘My East is Your West’ and ‘This Night-Bitten Dawn’ imagined a region across shifting sites and scales, and claimed belonging to Partition, that is, to division and dislocation as the basis of identity, territory, community and society in South Asia.

To Pick up a Brush

Driven by direct conversations with contemporary Indian painters, this essay engages with the struggle to pursue painting in contentious historical times, in an atmosphere of jostling camaraderie and dialogue across the Indian subcontinent. Written in 1985 for an exhibition of contemporary Indian art held at the Abby Weed Grey Gallery in New York, the essay addresses a series of productive problems facing Indian painters at that time, discussing audience, influence (of the past, the ‘West’, regional Indian visual cultures, and other painters), mysticism, form, materiality, colour, criticism, location, the figural, landscape, and the eternal problem of pink.

KLASIFIKASI PRIORITAS KETERTARIKAN PERILAKU PENGUNJUNG PAMERAN TERHADAP KARYA SENI RUPA KONTEMPORER

Many elements are presented to visitors during an exhibition of contemporary art. These elements include the overaching concept of the exhibit (Ko), issues raised in the exhibition (Is), the name of the artist whose popularity attracts patrons (Na), and visual forms of the art itself (Vi). Using these four elements I compiled questions and interviewed patrons with various backgrounds in the arts. The goal was to find out these patron’s interest priorities; in other words, which aspects of the exhibit were of most interest to them as an observer. Previous literature on visitor behavior and social response at contemporary art exhibitions has been used as a base for this research. This study aims to highlight the different interest priorities as a visitor behaviour and audiens reception due to exhibition. I My respondences in this research is the exhibition visitors who had a background in art, but not necessarily in the discipline being exhibited. The results of this study will serve to determine the interest of art exhibition patrons, so that artists and curators can be made more aware of the gaps that exist between exhibit creation and viewer interest, and how those gaps can be better closed.

Sound, Space and Bodies: Building Relations in the Work of Invisible Flock and Atelier Bildraum

In this article, I discuss sounds potential to construct fictional spaces and build relations between bodies using two performance installations as case studies. The first is Invisible Flock’s 105+dB, a site-specific sound work which transports crowd recordings of a soccer match to alternative geographical locations. The second is Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum, an installation performance using live photography, architectural models and ambient sound. By writing through these two works, I question how sound builds relations between bodies and across space as well as questioning the role of site within sound installation works.

Gogi Saroj Pal interview with Kathryn Myers

In 2007, exhibitions of contemporary Indian art in the USA were rare. Aside from a few commercial galleries and the Asia Society in New York, and the Chester and Davida Herwitz collection of modern...

Questions of Identity and Origins in the Museological Representation of Contemporary Indigenous Art in Taiwan

The significant ideological and cultural role of public museums in shaping national identity is widely acknowledged. This paper focuses on the roles of Taiwan’s public art museums in generating nationalist narratives that privilege notions of cultural distinctiveness and authenticity in the visual representation of art from Taiwan. Two exhibitions of contemporary Indigenous art provide a platform for critical analysis of the impact of identity politics on the selection, display, and promotion of Taiwanese Indigenous art. Questions of artistic agency are also explored in this paper, demonstrating how Indigenous artists in Taiwan are increasingly interrogating and contesting systems of museological representation which seek to locate or “frame” Indigenous art within an Austronesian nationalist identity narrative. These exhibitions and the artists’ works and observations offer an insight into the complex and shifting interrelationship between national identity politics and the museological representation of art in Taiwan.

Understanding consumers’ relationships with contemporary artworks through identity narratives

Purpose This paper focuses on the relationships that consumers develop with experiential objects in the context of the Biennale of Contemporary Art Exhibition, viewed from a dialogical and intersubjective approach. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the interpersonal relationships that visitors of the Biennale establish with contemporary artworks and to understand the characteristics of these relationships as well as their role in shaping Biennale visitors’ identity narratives. Design/methodology/approach This research employs an instrumental case study that draws on multiple data sources and examines consumers’ relationships with contemporary artworks. Findings The case study evidence introduces the relationships that emerged from Biennale visitors’ interactions with contemporary artworks and the identity narratives evolving from these relationships. The findings suggest that Biennale visitors’ relationships with the contemporary artworks take the form of I-thou and I-it relationships. These two modes of interpersonal relationships by entailing different characteristics led investigated visitors to live different types of experiences of contemporary art consumption. Research limitations/implications The first limitation of this research is that it focuses on the establishment of interpersonal relationships at the microgenetic level. Further research can provide additional insights by conducting a longitudinal case study. The second limitation is that it provides limited insights into the relationships that are revealed by consumers’ experiences with possessive objects. Future research may examine interpersonal relationships in terms of consumers’ relationships with their brands. Practical implications The understanding of visitors’ interactions and relationships with contemporary artworks provides insights into curatorial and marketing practices for such art institutions. Originality/value The findings of the current research provide new theoretical insights into the interpersonal relationships that consumers develop with experiential objects and into the distinctive identity narratives that evolve from the establishment of different types of interpersonal relationships.

Mapping a First World War archive through a contemporary lens

ABSTRACTThis article examines my current research, which is comprised of the making of a gallery installation film, Palimpsest. This film uses contemporary images of the everyday to contemplate events of the First World War as represented in a collection of unique, first-hand, unpublished letters sent home to London by mapmaker Rifleman Barney Griew. Palimpsest has been commissioned by Changing the Landscape, a multimedia arts project developed by Sarah Kogan and supported from public finding by the National Lottery through Arts Council of England and was the first contemporary art exhibition at The National Archive, UK. My writing explores the process and methods of representing the past through contemporary spaces, and their configuration into a continuous biographical narrative denoting the journey taken by Griew. In illustrating the development of the film, I scrutinize the work of the New Topographic Photographers of the 1970s focusing on their representation of landscape, the images of Thomas Ruff and the Russian Formalists in regard to multi-image storytelling. These examples are examined to draw comparisons and evaluate the fostering of critical understanding. I conclude by discussing the importance of contemporary digital technology in shaping our perception of the past.

The Educating Role of Visual Arts

This article discusses contemporary visual arts education current changes. Visual Arts Education is frequently underestimated by most European Curriculum which often gave and still gives priority to other knowledge areas. Nevertheless, culture industries like museums and a wide range of culture and social organizations are doing the opposite, leading visual art education to an increasingly dissemination, even if it is always less than we all expect. This article also focus on a current shift and which seems to be a kind of paradox: visual art education services from alternative culture institutions are becoming integrated on school activities. By recognizing Visual Art Education Value, culture institutions are trying to develop different approaches in order to engage visual arts with communities. By informing and promoting creative thinking, they are trying to reach community involvement and, consequently, breaking down barriers when necessary. In a more and more globalized world, it is urgent to rethink culture, ethnical, social, economical and political diversities and here is where visual arts education can become a more active player. Art always allowed man to create different worlds in our world as Nelson Goodman affirmed. By creating new worlds, art offers possibilities on new world perspectives and therefore it also might make possible a great miracle, which is the possibility of changing into a better world! Isn´t that what next Documenta 14 is doing? Documenta 14, Kassel, considered the world's largest and most prestigious exhibition of contemporary art, will be held in Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany, under the following theme: Learning from Athens. Both - visual art education and contemporary art - seem to share this wish and determination in changing to a better world by implicating local, national and international community. And Art always seemed to be a great `educator´ throughout mankind history.

The role of conservation in new contemporary art installations in new contexts: The case of Richard Serra's East–West/West–East in Qatar

In recent years Qatar has invested a significant sum of money on exhibitions of contemporary artists and public art. This paper discusses decision-making processes in the conservation of contemporary artworks installed in newly emerging art markets such as Qatar, where there are no established practices. In 2014, Richard Serra's East–West/West–East, an installation of four vertical plates made of weathering (Corten™) steel, which span one kilometre at heights so as to reach the level of the surrounding gypsum plateaus, was installed in the Brouq Nature Reserve near Zekreet desert, two kilometres from the sea in the western part of Qatar. The artwork is already considered by some a landmark for the isolated area. The plates have started to develop protective corrosion layers, although Corten™ is not completely corrosion resistant when located near coastal sites. They have also started to bend and are heavily inscribed by visitors. Conservation of public art is complex, as site-specific artworks are linked with the landscape and defined by the relationships they develop with the public. Art installations of this magnitude demand not only conservation measures but also a management plan. The isolated location, the scale of the artwork, the aggressive environment, and the lack of supervision and monitoring of the area challenge current practices but offer an opportunity to develop methods to preserve art of site-specific art in new environments and diverse audiences. Monitoring will allow a better understanding of the interactions of visitors with the artwork and will shed light on the material's behaviour in this specific environment.

Vulnerability, brutality, hope: Complexism and the 56th Venice Biennale

Abstract Exploring an aesthetics of complexity relevant to contemporary art, the artist/author discusses the 56th Venice Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor, in light of Philip Galanter’s essay ‘Complexism and the role of evolutionary art’. Artworks by Steve McQueen, Isaac Julien, Mika Rottenberg, Hito Steyerl, Im Heung-Soon, Katrīna Neiburga and Andris Eglītis are related to concepts of emergence, chaos, feedback, generative process, and networks, and writings by philosopher Manuel Delanda, sociologist Saskia Sassen and physicist James P. Crutchfield. As one of the most influential international exhibitions of contemporary art, the Venice Biennale is considered a bellwether of future trends; this edition called ‘All the World’s Futures’ presents artwork in context with a dissolving binary paradigm of communism/capitalism that fails to adequately address labour, environmental and immigration issues. The author concludes that an approach informed by complexity theory holds more promise, aesthetically and politically.

"The Necessity of a Show Like This": Southern Accent in Conversation

“The Necessity of a Show Like This”Southern Accent in Conversation Trevor Schoonmaker (bio), Stacy Lynn Waddell (bio), and Jeff Whetstone (bio) Ed. Note: Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art was co- curated by Trevor Schoonmaker (Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina) and Miranda Lash (Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky). Before the show opened in September, we sat down with Schoonmaker and artists Stacy Lynn Waddell and Jeff Whetstone, both featured in the exhibition.1 Click for larger view View full resolution Amy Sherald, High Yella Masterpiece: We Ain’t No Cotton Pickin’ Negroes, 2011. Oil on canvas; 59 × 69 inches (149.86 × 175.26 cm). All images courtesy of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University [End Page 63] “we have no idea what it truLy means to be southern” Stacy Lynn Waddell: I am very interested in the necessity of a show like this and what brought all this to bear for you and Miranda [Lash]. Trevor Schoonmaker: Miranda and I started talking about it about five years ago, and I started thinking about it, in earnest, when I moved from New York back to North Carolina. So, ten years ago, but not in any serious way, just moving from the center of the U.S. art world—contemporary art world—to Durham, North Carolina, and [asking] what does that mean, how can you be an active participant in Durham? But also thinking, “What does it mean to be southern?” I think at the show’s heart there’s an attempt to complicate the notion of what it means to be “southern.” As you guys know, as well or better than I do, [it’s] generally perpetuated as this monolithic, sort of, singular voice as if there’s only one southern culture when it’s this very multi- faceted place. That’s the crux of why we wanted to first tackle it. But why do it in a contemporary art exhibition when it’s been done so well [in] documentary studies, literature, music, film, so on? [W]e’re three southerners sitting here who participate in the larger national/international discussion, but how hard has it been for us to get a foothold, how hard is it to get recognition in Durham, North Carolina, in the national dialogue? How hard is it for the South to be accepted, mentioned, or recognized? I think trying to unpack the canon a little bit to allow some more room, to create a little bit more room and open it up—I think those are the two major reasons. Jeff Whetstone: I think as artists, too—and Stacy can attest to that because we’ve talked about this a lot—there’s been very little press about art in our region. As professional artists we read the journals, we want to read about somebody’s show—what did this critic say about this show? [But] it’s very hard to find a consistent voice about art happenings in the South. We kind of had it in [the IndyWeek] in Durham—there was always a visual arts column—but compared to New York, you know, there’s forty different press outlets about art that come out monthly, so I think that . . . those press outlets help the conversation along, and I think that . . . seems to be missing historically in a way, right? SLW: I think so. I’m interested in that and also this idea of having to be a journeyman as an artist, especially if you are from here. There are vestiges of that journey sort of narrative in the exhibition. I’m wondering if you thought about that relative to the artist “situation” that chooses to be here—the southern artist that is southern, but also is located and creates a practice here? TS: [I]f you look at film and literature and music, there [are] all these stories about the southern traveler—people leaving and coming home. It’s part of my [End Page 64] story. It’s not everyone’s narrative, but I think it’s a big part—that sense of going out, exploring the world, [and] bringing something back. I...

Is Another World Possible? The Politics of Utopia in Contemporary Art Exhibitions

The essay considers recent art exhibitions in relation to radical political claims. These include: Utopia Station (2003-), organized by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Molly Nesbit, and Rirkrit Tiravanija; the Van Abbemuseum’s “Forms of Resistance” (2007), curated by Will Bradley, Phillip van den Bossche, and Charles Esche; and the 2009 Istanbul Biennial, organized by the Zagreb-based collective WHW (What, How and for Whom? ). The essay provides a close reading of these three exhibitions, and considers their political context as set within the terms of neoliberalism, asking what capacity do art exhibitions have in providing creative alternatives to advanced capitalism, ways of alliance-building, and connecting to and advancing the emancipatory potential of historical and present social movements.

"We Never Did Return": Migration, Materiality and Time in Penny Siopis' Post-Apartheid Art

This article explores “migration” as both theme and operation in two works by the South African artist Penny Siopis, each created in the year 1997: the artist’s first film, My Lovely Day, and a related object installation entitled Reconnaissance (1900-1997). In each work, Siopis traces the course of her grandmother’s emigration from Europe to Africa through a variety of found, collected, or inherited components that bore witness to the longue durée of imperialism and Apartheid. Mediating between national, cultural, and familial narratives, these works are inherently archaeological in nature, and allowed viewers at the time to reflect on the multiple entangled histories that comprised the post-Apartheid condition. The late nineties in South Africa were defined by the conclusion of Apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and two major biennale exhibitions of contemporary art. The decade thusly saw a stream of collective efforts to both unearth the past and envision the future, marking a time of great cultural, artistic, political, and discursive transition. Mapping questions of medium-specificity and affect over this larger context, I investigate Siopis’ use and manipulation of historical traces as well as notions of contemporaneity and temporality in her art.

Conflicts between context and content in William Kentridge: Five Themes: a case study of the Melbourne exhibition

Travelling exhibitions of contemporary art navigate a multiplicity of places. As they travel from one institutional site to the next, they are framed and reframed amidst shifting contexts. Implicit in this navigation of contextual frameworks is the relationship between art and place. Informed by Miwon Kwon's study of site-specificity, this article examines how travelling exhibitions might generate meaning at their sites of temporary placement. It investigates this issue by examining the touring exhibition William Kentridge: Five Themes, which completed its journey at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in March 2012. This essay argues that this instance of the exhibition, in evading its surrounding historical and cultural context, inadvertently reiterated the processes of historical erasure that William Kentridge interrogates in his work. This case study indicates that the travelling exhibition format may accrue meaning in conflict with its content.

Former West: Documents, constellations, prospects

Abstract FORMER WEST (2008–2016) is a long-term contemporary art research, education, publishing, exhibition and discursive project that aims at developing a critical understanding of the legacy of the radical resistance to power in 1989, in order to both imaginatively reevaluate the present and speculate about global futures. It employs the “retroperspective” method – allowing for imaginative thinking and acting through both global pasts and future prospects simultaneously. The work of art plays a critical role in this context and is understood as a “document” through which to re-read the recent course of history otherwise than the way in which we’ve gotten to know it, demonstrating thus the imaginative potential of artistic practice in shaping and transforming the world.

The politics of vibrant matter: Consistency, containment and the concrete of Mussolini’s bunker

This article explores the idea of how vibrancy can be produced. Specifically, the attempt is to investigate the multiplicities of vibrancy by considering one of Mussolini’s bunkers. The author examines the location of the bunker in the EUR ( Esposizione Universale Romana) neighbourhood in Rome, the bunker’s materiality, and the context and social meaning of the bunker through a contemporary art exhibition called ‘Confronti’ (Confrontations) that took place in the bunker in 2009. The article argues that while emphasizing matter’s inherent vibrancy may be useful in some cases, there is also merit in further unpacking the ways in which vibrancy is produced. In this example, the concrete bunker expresses vibrancy through the processes involved in the emergent material form, and in the sustained politics and social considerations embedded in valuing tangible urban heritage.

Fluent in Venice: Curating Australian Aboriginal art beyond the ‘urban/desert’ paradigm

Historically, the (re)presentation of Aboriginal art both in Australia and internationally was typically structured by the opposition ‘urban’ versus ‘desert’ art, where the desert signified nature and timelessness, and the city culture, progress and history. A sustained collective effort by cultural practitioners exposed the deep colonialist roots of this opposition. Most commentators now agree that it limits engagement with the practices of Aboriginal artists, and few employ it anymore. As a paradigm, however, it reveals much about constructions of the colonial city. This essay examines how one contemporary art exhibition worked to challenge and transcend this paradigm. Australia's entry at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), fluent, was co-curated by Brenda L. Croft, Hetti Perkins and Victoria Lynn. It featured the work of three Aboriginal women artists from different language groups, who each continued the artistic practices of her culture: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie and Judy Watson. By focusing on the curators as cultural producers, and closely reading the archival traces of their practice, this essay examines how the exhibition's framework met the city of Venice, and enabled it to make an intervention into the art historical time and space of Aboriginal art, and the Venice Biennale as an institution.

Curatorial constructs: archives in fine art exhibitions

The essay explores the inclusion of archive material within fine art exhibitions, particularly considering differences in approach between displays of contemporary art and those featuring Old Master paintings. Taking the National Gallery's 2012 Turner Inspired exhibition as a primary case study, it looks at how archives are interpreted and displayed alongside traditional works of art. It compares the National Gallery's experience with a number of recent Old Master and nineteenth-century artists' exhibitions to consider whether there is a commonality of approach between different exhibiting institutions. Finally, it compares the different approach to displaying archives within contemporary art exhibitions and explores the rationale for this difference.

Video Art: “A White Cube” or “A Black Box”?

Video art is a hybrid, combining features of both contemporary art as well as screen arts. It brings together different ways of perception working both in a manner of a movie which transfers the viewer into virtual daydreaming (Matthew Barney, Steeve McQueen), and in a manner of a painting or sculpture which gives a viewer some intense corporal experience (Tony Oursler). Accordingly, there are two ways of presenting video art: in a white cube and a black box. In 1970-s video art used to be presented in white cubes of contemporary art galleries where they nailed the screens right to the wall. In a white cube video comes into the viewers sight together with other items in display, therefore a show-piece comes into contact with other ones in a spectators minds eye. Moreover, a white cube gives visitors an opportunity to be in charge of their time of viewing, which implies, that the white cube perception appears rather chaotic and the final cut of a video in the spectators mind becomes unpredictable, what is characteristic of video. In 2000-s when both video and film technologies got replaced by the digital one, all the moving pictures started to resemble one another. A well-lit room of a white cube was not appropriate for high definition videos, whereas a black box is usually associated with a cinema hall and consequently a video presented in such a cinematic manner makes a viewer unconsciously expect to see a cinematic piece of art. Video today is an indispensable figurant of any significant exhibition of contemporary art and it is defined as an artistic (not cinematic) media. Traditionally video is being exhibited in a white cube of a gallery; however, there is now a distinct tendency to present video art in a black box, that is in a cinematic way. As a result its getting harder and harder to distinguish video art from experimental cinema. Nowadays the very strategy of presentation of video may help this media to retain identity or to lose it.