Iain Irving : Projects

Too Fast - Slow Down, Huntly

2009-06-22T19:55:00.004+01:00

At the weekend, the Slow Down Walking and Cycling Festival took place in Huntly. Glasgow based artist Jacqueline Donachie had developed a public art event to encourage the locals out of their cars and onto their bikes. The event actually became an immense 4-mile collaborative performative drawing by the Cycling parade. Half the bikes had an ingenious drawing device attached to them, which drew a temporary coloured chalk line as they were cycled round the town. It was a euphoric and slightly anarchic experience, as though we were taking over the town. However, unlike an outlaw motorcycle gang, it was non-confrontational, pleasant and did not scare the locals. As we cycled along, at a swift pace, the local bystanders smiled and waved at the sight of all the bikes and whistles on the sunny Saturday afternoon. The parade travelled around the town then ended in the Battlehill quarry where Aberdeenshire artist, Merlyn Riggs had laid out a High Tea, in the form of a free bar and food. All very much a New Genre Public Art relational art piece efficiently produced by Donachie and Deveron Arts. The public made the artwork by their participation. The experience was of self-involvement, like the cast of extras in a film or the chorus in a theatre play. The satisfaction was that we were supportive with our role and position. The best view seemed to be from the sky, looking down on the town, we could only imagine what it was like but perhaps this is where the art was.

Later in the afternoon in Battlehill Woods, we could just be an audience. In small groups, we were led along the path to where Catriona McKay and Alistair MacDonald as Strange Rainbow played live harp and electronics. The music started with the sounds you heard when walking from the quarry to the clearing in the woods where the performance took place. It was an intense, emotional and contemplative experience. The highly controlled music’s every note and sound selected and placed, like a form of live curating. The ambient sounds of the wind in the trees, cars on the main road and a plane in the air became fleeting parts, this was where we really slowed down.

2009-06-14T21:16:00.002+01:00

Authenticity

2009-06-14T21:09:00.003+01:00

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore website of their Authenticity book

Review of Progress 2

2009-06-14T21:04:00.000+01:00

My objectives are to continue to define curatorial practice through critical analysis of my own and others’ practice. I have produced a comprehensive analytical text that defines and maps out my own experience and learning from an institutional profession of curating through to an independent individual practice. There is now an urgency to underpin this analysis from a historical and theoretical prospective, therefore I will research and produce a number of papers which analyse the theory, methods and practices of important curatorial figures including Harold Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Richard Demarco, Dan Cameron and Matthew Higgs. I will also research and derive a historical spectrum of curatorial practices focusing primarily on Scotland, which determine the context and value systems in which the contemporary art institutions and the independent art curators work and exist.

I am also in the process of developing 3 collaborative curatorial projects with Deveron Arts, Huntly, Cake magazine, Aberdeen, and Limousine Bull Art Collective/NTS, Aberdeenshire which will be presented in September – November 2009. These test projects will place my research and curatorial practice in the public sphere. I will also continue to archive and test projects through my research blog - http//:iainirvingresearch.blogspot.com.

I will also seek ways to integrate my research formally into my scholarly role at Gray’s, through the UG Critical and Contextual Studies programme and Masters seminar programme.

Curating a List

2009-06-12T14:26:00.000+01:00

Curating by hand

2009-06-08T13:55:00.004+01:00

Calum Stirling - Art Project Name Generator

2009-06-05T15:46:00.002+01:00

In Art Projects go to Art Project Name Generator.

I remember coming across Calum's site a number of years ago and the Art Project Name Generator which I'm still not sure is just a bit of fun or a real critism of the banality of exhibition titles. Probably both.

acuratorialconcept

2009-06-05T15:03:00.007+01:00

These hypothetical exhibition ideas are turning into curating as writing, as its as much as is said or contextualised as there is space between and around the words.

Vision of Humanity

2009-06-03T15:20:00.002+01:00

Global Peace Index

Angus Hood interview

2009-05-28T22:58:00.001+01:00

ANGUS

Dellar telling us about London links

2009-05-25T16:07:00.000+01:00

The Blue Chamber (revisited once)

2009-05-25T15:24:00.003+01:00

The Blue Chamber (revisited twice)

2009-05-25T15:23:00.002+01:00

The Blue Chamber (revisited thrice)

2009-05-25T15:19:00.002+01:00

Microexhibition

2009-05-25T15:18:00.001+01:00

Rural Curating

2009-05-24T22:40:00.003+01:00

My Villages

Rural Art Spaces
Kathrin Bahm

Shifting Ground

Littoral

Curating Places Research

2009-05-24T22:00:00.000+01:00

Situations

A Curated Magazine

2009-05-24T21:41:00.001+01:00

Simon Armitage

2009-05-24T21:28:00.000+01:00

Simon Armitage Talks About Gig and The Scaremongers from craig smith on Vimeo.

Matthew Higgs

2009-05-15T18:27:00.001+01:00

Matthew Higgs interview and spins records

Ronald Jones on Navel-gazing or fresh methodologies? Finding the right name for artistic research

2009-05-14T23:14:00.001+01:00

Omphaloskepsis

OPINION

‘I can hardly understand the importance given to the word “research” [...] The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution or as steps toward an unknown ideal of painting [...] I have never made trials or experiments.’
Pablo Picasso interviewed by Marius de Zayas (1923)

Curators archives : 2 many curators

2009-05-13T23:59:00.002+01:00

This image reminds me of coming across the Demarco Archive in the old Blackfriars Street Church, Edinburgh which at the time Richard Demarco was using as his gallery, probably around 1985. The piles of materials, lots of paper and print material, undeveloped film canisters - organised chaos. While reading about Szeemann and his practice, it seems similar to Demarco. Demarco famously brought Beuys to Scotland in the 70's (I do remember seeing Beuys, outside the previous Demarco gallery in the High Street, while I was still at school, I remember the image of the hat and pocket jacket). Its documented that Szeemann made his history with the "When Attitudes Become Form" exhibition in Bern, changing the way we experience an exhibition and how artists and curators make them.
They seemed to work in similar ways, taking risks, being entrepreneurial, making things happen, keeping it going. I've just read some reporting on the Trade Secrets curatorial conference at the Banff Centre, Canada (not the NE one) and there are comments from Matthew Higgs and others about the "pandemic" of curatorial courses available and that there is a potential for a new conformity in going against the modernist canon, and so are we creating a new one?, referring to what he perceived as too-frequent study of phenomena like the New York MOMA's "Information" exhibition of 1970 and Harald Szeeman's archives. So is it best not to study the history, so that you don't get any old ideas? or as Cuauhtémoc Medina said that curating to him was a ' paradise of the improvised" but "you may not be able to teach curating, it is possible and productive to educate curators". well thats okay then...

Tell us about your practice, Hans

2009-05-13T23:36:00.001+01:00

Nesbitt and Irving

2009-05-01T22:23:00.001+01:00

Say what you see

2009-04-14T20:22:00.002+01:00