By Nicole Findlay
Fledgling curators hover around a table, plucking tiny images from a nearby pile and placing each on a giant floor plan. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the colourful chips are arranged and rearranged until a picture begins to emerge. Only this picture is the conceptualization of an art exhibit that will feature both two-dimensional works and performance art.
The prospective curators are 15 students that Ming Tiampo, a professor of art history, is leading as they prepare an exhibit, Resounding Spirit: Contemporary Japanese Art of the 1960s. Tiampo helped organize the original exhibit at the Gibson Art Gallery in 2004.
As the students navigate the CUAG floor plan, the size of the works and the dimensions of the room are weighed against the themes around which the art will be grouped. The selection of videos, calligraphy, oil paintings and even performance art spanning the 1950s and ’60s, features both the Japanese movement Gutai, (link to previous story) and the international work that was influenced by the emerging form.
Asato Ikeda, an art history MA student suggests grouping the various works by movement using subtitles.
“Since the Gibson collection encompasses a diverse variety of artists, I suggested that the show provide a more comprehensive perspective on the 60s by introducing various artistic movements,” said Asato.
A brief discussion ensues and the group votes in favour of Ikeda’s suggestion.
“It’s challenging to please a group of 16,” said Emily Fitzpatrick, a BA honors student in the Theory and History of Architecture. “Everyone has different opinions and desires, which you have to respect and work with, even if they contradict your own.”
Not only do the students grapple with the images on hand, equally perplexing is how to display the images they don’t have. Licensing fees that would permit the inclusion of certain works would decimate their budget. Tiampo suggests an alternative solution – purchase copies of books in which these same images are rendered and display them in glass cases.
The students also consider the exhibit visitors. Their instinct to juxtapose modern and traditional works must be weighed against the ease with which visitors unfamiliar with the subject matter, interpret the works.
These negotiations will continue throughout the term as piece together all the components necessary for the exhibit.
“It’s exciting to know that what you’re doing is actually going to be relevant in the future, outside the classroom,” said Fitzpatrick.
This is the second profile in a series to appear in This Week @ FASS, that follows a group of students as they put together a version of an exhibit entitled Resounding Spirit: Contemporary Japanese Art of the 1960s. The exhibit is based on an original exhibit of the same title mounted at the Gibson Art Gallery in 2004. The students’ version is scheduled to open at the Carleton University Art Gallery in February 2007.