Curating: looking after a collection, but Bright does not have her own collection, she is freelance, working for museums who don’t have their own photography or fashion curator. She says its great to move between them,she has to work quickly, and keeps her accessing everything, figuring out whose who and getting things done quickly.
When putting together an exhibition, she thinks of how the exhibition functions with its audience in terms of audio and visual, almost like a DJ or a plate spinner. She needs to entertain, and move them through the space. She is always thinking about the design, how to keep someone interested through the experience of the exhibition and through the space.
She also wants to support the people who work with her, no matter who they are or at what point they are involved in the process, its not just about herself or the artists whose work she is exhibiting. Its not always possible, the industry favors newness, speed and sales (things she doesn't favor!)
"Writing is a necessary evil of curating"
When it comes to her books, Bright spends most of her time is researching, and then only writing at then very end. Rather like her self, he has yet to meet any writer who actually likes writing at all. She doesn't plan to much either, better to just start writing and see where it goes. She wrote "Faces of fashion", commissioned by national portrait gallery. Despite the big opening and exhibition, she says its "Not as glamorous as people think!", that in actual fact it was a lot of hard work and then a couple of hours of glamour. Bright also co-curated with Val Williams "How we are" at Tate Britain, exhibition then a book. It was the first history of British photography at the Tate,a massive exhibition of work. 18 months of hard work to curate, but something she is very proud of.
Hearing about how Bright is not actually a fan of writing, and her free form approach to writing, is quite inspiring. As someone battles with dyslexia, and an inability to articulate my thoughts succinctly, I find it refreshing to hear that I don't actually have to enjoy the writing process, and that actually it doesn't have to be months and months on end of just writing.
When talking about curating Elina Brotherus' exhibition "Regle de Jue" (Rule of the game) she noted how working with a curator helps the artist to find away to work forward with the work, figuring out what it is about, contextualizing it, removing artistic baggage and bringing clarity to the project. She went on to talk about the design of the exhibition space, and how she creates actual physical dioramas of her exhibitions in order to get an idea for the space.
Bright used bright colors on the walls, the space was molded around the exhibition, and they made the decision to move away from a classical hang.
During this section of the lecture Bright mentioned that the inspiration for Regle de Jue was the Fluxus movement, this is something I would like to do more research into, she described it as a sort of set of instructions on how to be an artist by a group of artists, a quick search online shows this to be a movement along the lines of the dadaists in their desire to be free of museums.
“What are you interested in? What do you want to do?”
Home Truth's - she wanted to do something on mothering. An exhibition, and then book, based on something that she had a connection with and real life experience of. Its not her artwork on show, but the exhibition itself is her art. Her research went to into a digital presentation that she worked on with a digital curator, and was shown as part of the exhibition. It was important, and it shows collaboration as well as use of different mediums. This was shown at the photographers gallery in London.
Its interesting how she talked about putting more accessible work at the beginning of the exhibition in order not to scare people off, so she is thinking very carefully not just about her own response to the work, or how it fits in with the other work, but how the mood of the work is going to affect people walking through the exhibition.
She then mentions about showing the exhibition at the Family Museum, as it was a building originally used as a home for children, it was progressive in that the parents could come and collect there children when they were ready to parents, and the children would be taken care of and educated. She didn’t want to do a book, she wanted to do a pamphlet but the galleries wanted her to do a book as they sell much better. But this did allow her to bring in other works, history and part of her research.
My questions
How does an exhibition start?
It works in every way you can imagine, for some you will be approached, for some you can pitch. Pitching can be very difficult. For home truths she was approached by the then curator of the photographers gallery asking if she had any ideas. Food was a collaboration between two people who had the same idea.
how does someone get started?
Its really hard and very competitive. Bright interned at a gallery and moved on from there. You need to have a masters degree at least, preferably a PHD. You need experience, and to show willing. The problem is that there are very few jobs available. Look at the wider field that involves the same skills, think about commercial galleries, auction houses and magazines!
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