Ryan Gander as a curator

Night in the Museum - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

"The role of curator is one of gathering and collecting, grouping and assembling- instincts innate in all of us. Choosing what clothes you put on in the morning, what objects you arrange on the mantelpiece or even what to eat when friends come to dinner are all curatorial acts...Just because we are not knowingly being creative and curatorial, doesn't mean we are not being curatorial and creative."- Ryan Gander

This exhibition questioned the role of the curator as a mediator between art and the public, looking beyond traditional relationships; changing the relationship between the contemporary and traditional art, and the viewer, in some kind of weird art threesome. 

• Could think about other ways to present work together, rather than just putting a painting in a frame on a wall.
• Consider space in a different way, galleries have lots of empty space, how can you use it better?
• Are there any themes that run through the work which can be used to link it together? (i.e. blue)
• Think about how the viewer will see it

Anselm Kiefer at the White Cube

Recently/a while ago whilst the exhibition was still on/nearly two months ago, after being recommended  by a lecturer, I ventured to London to see Anselm Kiefer's 'Walhalla' at the White Cube. The exhibition consisted of installation, painting and sculpture. 

As you enter the exhibition, you walk into a dark space, a corridor of beds/sculpture work, lit from above. As well as looking at the art, I wanted to see how curation can be used to effect the viewer, as well as perception of the work; do things change via how they're presented?

I was also interested in the impact of using texture and building into into work. Kiefer used Led, but I could look at using different materials with my work, perhaps materials that wouldn't usually be considered artistic tools.

There was also a small room, again dark, which appeared to be a material cupboard, materials he's collected over time, with negatives enlarged onto led draping which I found particularly interesting. I think it reinforces the idea that you should surround yourself with your work, and not just do it and put it away- when is a piece of art complete? The black and white photography also made me want to go and do some more street photography, so I did this, on my DSLR and 35mm, in London on the same day.