(5th November) 'The Thought of Stuff' curated by Leila Galloway & Andy Price May - June 2010
(Royal British Society of Sculpture - RSS)
Curating an exhibition consists of a lot of hard work, there are many points to consider and organise/ decide upon. The exhibition spoken about started off small with only a select few artists but it ended up being a lot bigger with more artists than anticipated. The artists involved were; Jonathan Callan, Adam Gillam, Wayne Lucas, Jack Strange, Esmerelda Valencia and Alison Wilding. Asking the artists can take a very long time to get answers and some will say no so you need plenty in case of rejection. To help advertise the show effectively they had help from a graphic artist who produced the website and invitations. It can become very frantic when curating a show to meet deadlines and make decisions. Leila and Andy were mostly interested in the way artists used/ related to the materials they use. As well as deciding on artists and the location you also have to produce a press releases, one for the RSS and one by De Montfort University. Another very important part of curating a show is money. For this show they had very little money so had to budget which is very important. They did gain some funding from the University and the RSS offered them the exhibition space for nothing which helped them a lot. The money for the show was sorted out roughly 7 months before the exhibition and due to not being ready they also had to postpone it by a few months. An other important part of curating a show is that the artwork you take requires insurance from its transportation to on the wall in the gallery. The artists will expect their work to be well treated and returned in the conditions to which it was sent out. For this particular exhibition it cost £800 to collect the work and another £800 to take the work back.
I found this talk very interesting as curating a show and working in a gallery is something I would love to gain experience in in the future.
