Thursday, May 22, 2008

WLTM @ HMS

WLTM

29 year old artist seeks space for reflection and development of curatorial project which puts art works together, taking dating agency methodologies as a means to find perfect partners for individual works of art.

Standing Room - Exhibition space at HMS.
This is part of the proposal submitted to HMS (Harrington Mills Studio - LongEaton) for the project WLTM - a curatorial residency over July and August which will result in an exhibition at the end of that two month period.
In many ways the opportunity to work on this project, which is a bit of a departure from my most recent practice (although a return to some previously explored concerns), will provide a mental break from the political and sometimes tiring issues of regeneration in the city, but will also provide a physical break from the city too. Perhaps a bit of distance from Stoke-on-Trent will come at a very welcome time, and will enable me the space and time to reflect on all that has been happening.
Anyway, I will be placing a call to artists very soon to submit a piece of work for the WLTM exhibition. The piece submitted should be representative of the artist's practice, and should function as a good stand-in for them as an artist. Each artist will also fill in a carefully constructed questionnaire. Dating agency methods will be employed in order to calculate how well each artist (and therefore their stand-in piece of work) match each other. The 6 best matches will be deemed the 6 perfect partners and this will form the selection method for the exhibition.
In this way the selection methods are entirely objective, rather than the usual way of curating a show which is to select what you like, or what you think is good, or what you think best fits the brief.
Perhaps this project is borne out of thesometimes disheartening process of applying for hundreds of exhibitions and not being selected, and wondering what on earth the selection criteria was, and why work was not chosen. With this project each artist really has an equal chance, and the selection process is entirely transparent from the start. It will be interesting to see how other artists feel about such a process. The plan is to also have a networking event at the private view where artists can meet their works perfect partners.

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