Digital Curating Course
Whitechapel Gallery
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was invited by the Gallery’s director Iwona Blazwick to work with the youth collective, Duchamp & Sons to co-curate an exhibition with works selected from the Hiscox Collection ahead of the summer reopening. The project emerged from a number of unplanned factors: a free slot in the Gallery’s summer exhibition programme and the postponement of our Creative Careers Boot Camp and Work Placement Scheme which I had been developing. The gallery had already invited British painter Gary Hume and Berlin-based artist Sol Calero to each bring new perspectives to the Hiscox Collection in their personal selection of works. This would offer young people an opportunity to have their display in dialogue with theirs.
The Digital Curating Course was an 8-week paid pilot intensive on Zoom inviting 10 current and past Duchamp & Sons members to participate in the project through an open call and application process. Project aims:
To give young people training in the curatorial process drawing on the expertise of Gallery staff and invited professionals.
To offer insight into different career paths in the arts, the skills needed and the routes in.
To offer (digitally) training about what curators do, how collections are made, how art works are conserved and installed.
To curate an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery.
To offer new perspectives and interpretation on artworks from The Hiscox Collection.
The conceptual thread for the exhibition ‘home’ drew on a pandemic- interrupted project with the artist Ayo Akingbade. Confined indoors and working from their laptops and screens, we asked what does home mean to us; what role might art play when our freedom is interrupted; can confinement can trigger new creative processes and networks of solidarity?
Sessions were led by myself, other Whitechapel Gallery staff, and other leading professionals. These included
Creative writing sessions on Home with Fawzia Mahmood, scriptwriter
Curating with Collections with Lydia Yee, WG Chief Curator
Curating space and Project Galleries with Renee Odjidja and Sofia Victorino, WG Daskalopolous Director of Education and Public Programmes
Building a collection with Whitney Hintz, Curator of Hiscox Collection
Curating digitally with Amanprit Sandhu, Curator
Visual Studio Visit with Turner prize nominated artist Gary Hume on his work and curatorial process for his Hiscox exhibition
Researching; developing exhibition concept; selecting artists and artworks; presentation of concepts; finalizing exhibition concept and design; writing exhibition panel text; with Renee Odjidja and Sofia Victorino
Planning, installation and virtual hanging with Ryszard Lewandowski, WG Gallery Manager and former colleague, Christ Spear, Exhibitions Designer at Zabludowicz Gallery
Creating a communications campaign with Jenny Lea, WG Director of Communications
Onsite visiting and installation of works with project staff and technicians.
Alongside these, participants undertook independent study, research and assignments.
The resulting outcome was the exhibition Home: Live > In Room.
Watch
On the occasion of the 2020 Art Icon Gala, hear Duchamp & Sons, Curator: Youth Programmes Renee Odjidja and artist Ayo Akingbade on two projects achieved during the pandemic.
I had an opportunity to share the Digital Curating project with academic and researcher Dr. Carolina Silva for her paper looking at the digital responses of youth collectives in contemporary art museums around the world during the COVID-19 lockdown and closure of cultural institutions.
You can read the article, which appears is in Vol.46, Issue 4, here.
Listen
In this podcast we discuss the process of curating the exhibition, consider the ways in which lockdown has affected experiences of art and culture and how the home – as refuge or prison, as still life or real life - has inspired generations of artists.