Issue 2 Curatorial Strategies

Towards an Editorial - James Swinson 2003

This our second issue of outsidedge e-magazine appears
curtesy of a new publisher, the London Group. The first issue
of the magazine was published by the Wellhung Art Company
and so we are exploring an obvious benefit of digital publishing
by becoming nomadic. The move to the London Group
coincides with the construction of their brand new website and
we are very pleased to be associated with the emergence of
this illustrious and historic artist-led organisation on the net.

The editorial policy on outsidedge is to adopt a theme that
raises important issues for contemporary art practice, theory
and culture. The contributors were asked to respond to my
provisional introduction of the topic of Curatorial Stategies
which was as follows:

The central role of the curator is inseperable from the high
profile that the visual arts has gained in recent times. Curation
has become a pivitotal feature across the art exhibition
spectrum from the city centre megagalleries such as the Tate
Modern to the artist-run-spaces on the margins of the new arts
economy. The role of the gallery curator from a backroom
facilatator to a major player is marked by the establishment of
college courses in curation and the growing number of features
and interviews with curators appearing in the art press.

The origins of the curator was in the passion for collection in
Western culture that was associated first with the Renaissance
and subsequently the spread of Museums and Picture
Galleries across Europe. The curator in this context was
responsible for the collection, classification and study of
artifacts. Certainly in major museums and galleries the residual
traces of this scholarly role are being obliterated by the
impressarial skills and showmanship demanded by the global
market of tourism and entertainment.

The challenge that the historic avant-gardes in Europe posed
to the art establishment was characterised not just by new
forms of art practice but by a transformation of the exhibition
and distribution of artwork. Part of the challenge mounted by
movements such as Dada and Surrealism to the Art Institutions
was for the artists to control and curate their own work. The
legacy of this form of integrated practice arguably remains a
key characteristic of innovative and subversive art practice
ever since. A new and more prominent role for the curator
seemed to emerge with the institutional response to the
challenges of conceptual art practice. A response to the
proliferation of media and materials from both the art dealers
and market and the public galleries and museums. Rudi Fuch's
curation of Documenta 7 in the early 80's was an outstanding
example of a new authorial role for the curator. He treated a
diverse range of artists' works as raw material to create a huge

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Editorial-James Swinson
installation heavily inflected with his own ideas. At the same
time he showed a way forward for institutions and dealers
anxious to re-structure the visual arts as a global industry.

So where is curation today? - Is there a progressive role for the
specialist curator? How is the internet changing the curation,
exhibition and distribution of art? In this issue we are inviting
contributions from artists, critics and indeed curators to a
debate on curatorial strategies.

The Contributions

Philippa Beale has responded with an account of Wilson to
Callaghan an event that she devised with Posterstudio in the
90's and which represented a unique approach to curating
work from the recent past. Gavin Wade can certainly be
described as a creative curator, whose practice brings together
a range of contributors whose work is deployed in a quest to
find new ways of presenting art to the world. In small
Stategies he compares two recent curatorial projects. Sara
Diamond in Curating the Flow looks at how the rise of digital
technology has brought new challenges to curation and to the
art world's notion of authorship. Simon O'Sullivan uses his
experience of the Turin Biennale to explore the aesthetics of
dissent in Dissenting Machines suggesting new forms of art
practice and collaboration to challenge the mainstream. In
Passing is an exploration by Jean-Paul Martinon of the free
art exhibition as a gift. Finally, we are pleased to include
Games of Truth which was delivered by Johnny Golding as
her Inaugural Lecture at the University of Greenwich. Games of
Truth reflects Johnny's experience as head of Theory at the
Jan van Eyck Akademie inhabiting visual art practice much in
the way she demands that theory should be inhabited. Terms
usually associated with art practice are redeployed in her blood
poetic.

This magazine is also an exhibition space and includes a
collaborative photographic project by Ariane Severin and
Marianne Wie. A piece based on a chance find of
photographic material by film-maker Evan English. Evidence
of two recent moving image installations one by fim-maker
Jane Madsen and another by James Swinson, which was
originally shown in Art and the Spirit along with Philippa
Beale's prints .

Finally we are pleased to reproduce a poem by Singaporean
artist Lee Wen which he distributed by e-mail last year.