Curating Degree Zero at WCAC

Seminars

Talking Curators: Reviewing 10 Years of Curatorial Discourse.

WCAC Friday 4 April from 2.00 – 5.00pm.

This seminar is designed to engage both specialists and general audiences, and to help progress an enquiry into what the curator role might mean in contemporary culture.

The specific focus of the seminar will be the question of the development of the curator role in recent years and the future possibilities of curators' work across contemporary art and culture after the explosion of curatorial debates in the 1990s and 2000s.

By way of introducing the discussion, there will be a short overview of the emergence of the 'curator' role as a key theme in the conversations of artists and critics. The speakers are asked to address three specific questions:
(i) Why has the curator role become such an important focus in the last decade?
(ii) What might the future of that role be? what are the possibilities?
(iii) In what sense does the curator role link up with questions of criticism and the idea of 'critical' practice?

The seminar will use the opportunity provided by the presentation of the Curating Degree Zero Archive in Ireland to explore the current state of curatorial practice and the progress of the debate on curating over the last decade.

If you would like to participate please contact aidan.mcelwaine@gradcam.ie with the phrase "curating degree zero" in the message title.

Among the invited speakers are:

Paul O Neill, research fellow at Situations, UWE, Bristol.

Mike Fitzpatrick, Director and curator at Limerick City Art Gallery.

Aisling Prior, Director 'Breaking Ground' % for art programme of Ballymun regeneration project.

Georgina Jackson, Graduate School research scholar at DIT and curatorial practice researcher.

Pippa Little, curatorial practice researcher at LSAD and limerick City Art Gallery.

As part of the lead in to the seminar due to take place in April, DIT Fine Art Year 2 students raise a basic question about the point of the archive. 'What's it for?'

Dr. Paul O'Neill presents an overview of curatorial discourse contextualising the curating degree zero archive project, flanked by Georgina Jackson and Mike Fitzpatrick. (April 4th 2008)

Participants at the Seminar on April 4th 2008 at WCAC.

Other seminars

In the spirit of self-organisation and DIY, other seminars and events will be evolved in dialogue with the users of the archive during its presentation at WCAC.

Year 2 undergraduate students from DIT Fine Art participated in an informal seminar on aspects of the archive just prior to the official opening on Saturday 15/3/08 1:30-3:00 pm. Among, the questions that emerged from the group was the relationship between the practices represented in the archive and the construction of historical canons and 'star' systems. As part of the explorartion of the archive the participants were asked to find one thing in the archive that was of specific interest for them. The proposition being that although it would not be possible to exhaustively read the whole archive, it would still be possible to find meaning and value in the encounter with this assemblage of work. One particular text by Hutner - "I am a Curator" - became a focus for debate.

The argument centered on whether the model of the 'curator' role should be reduced to a gatekeeping role. Another, point of focus was the theme of education and critical pedagogy within recent art practice. Ute Meta Bauer's work on 'Education, Information, Entertainment' and the debates about art academies in Europe and the future form of art education was employed as a specific example of the topicality of art and pedagogy.

Paul O Neill

Paul O Neill is a curator, artist, and writer, based in Bristol. He is Great Western Research Alliance (GWR) Research Fellow in Commissioning Contemporary Art with Situations at the University of the West of England, Bristol, where he is leading 'Locating the Producers' - a three year international research project that investigates curatorial methodologies and the commissioning of contemporary art through internationally-focused public events.

From 2003-08, he dedicated his time to researching the development of contemporary curatorial discourses since the late 1980s as part of a PhD scholarship at Middlesex University. Between 2001-03, he was gallery curator at London Print Studio Gallery, where he curated group shows such as Private Views; Frictions; A Timely Place...Or Getting Back to Somewhere; All That is Solid and solo projects: Being Childish Billy Childish; Phil Collins Reproduction Timewasted; Harrowed: Faisal Abdu' Allah and Locating: Corban Walker. He was co- director of MultiplesX from 1997-06; an organisation that commissions and supports curated exhibitions of artist's editions, which he established in 1997 and has presented exhibitions at spaces such as the ICA, London; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Ormeau Baths, Belfast; Glassbox, Paris and The Lowry, Manchester.

Paul has curated or co-curated over 50 exhibition projects including: Tape Runs Out, Text and Work Gallery, Bournemouth (2007); Making Do, The Lab, Dublin (2007); Our Day Will Come,

Zoo Art Fair, London (2006); General Idea: Selected Retrospective, Project, Dublin (2006); Mingle-Mangled, part of Cork Caucus, Cork (2005); La La Land, Project, Dublin (2005); Coalesce: The Remix, Redux, London (2005); Tonight, Studio Voltaire, London, (2004); Coalesce: With All Due Intent at Model and Niland Art Gallery, Sligo (2004); Are We There Yet? Glassbox, Paris (2000) and Passports, Zaçheta Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw (1998).

As an artist, he has exhibited widely including at: Zaçheta Gallery of Contemporary Art, Warsaw; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; temporarycontemporary, London; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Villa Arson, Nice; South London Gallery; Cell, London; the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin and many others.

In the last five years, he has lectured on numerous Curatorial Training Programmes including those at Goldsmiths College London; de Appel, Amsterdam and the Whitney ISP, New York. His writing has been published in many books, catalogues, journals and magazines including Art Monthly, Space & Culture, Everything, Contemporary, and The Internationaler. Recent published work includes the chapter 'The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse' in Issues in Curating Contemporary Art & Performance, ed. Judith Rugg, (Bristol & Chicago, Intellect Books, 2008), and the edited anthology Curating Subjects, ed. Paul O'Neill (Amsterdam & London, de Appel and Open Editions, 2007) has just been published.

www.situations.org.uk, www.curatingdegreezero.org, www.slashseconds.org

Mike Fitzpatrick

Curator and Artist, Director/Curator of Limerick City Gallery of Art. Irish Commissioner, 52nd Venice Biennale
Education: Independent Study Programme, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Studio Fellowship at PS1 Museum, LIC, New York, Research Studies at University of Liverpool, MA Fine Art from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. University of Central England, Italian Gov. Scholarship, Academia De Brera, Milan, PTA, Dip Fine Art, Limerick School of Art and Design.

A member of IKT, Organisation of International Curators. Committee member of ev+a, the Exhibition of Visual Art, Limerick. Has organised over 80 exhibitions at LCGA, which include Tina O’Connell, Andrew Kearney, Caroline

McCarthy, Gerard Byrne, Ann Ryan, Sean Lynch, Jack Donovan, Amanda Coogan, Mark O’Kelly, Donald Teskey, Tom Molloy, William Kentridge and Lindsay Seers. Curated the Visual Strand of the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2005 and 2006 with the exhibition ‘Failure’.

Initiated the Shinnors Scholarship MA in Curatorial Practice at Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2003. Guest Lecturer in Britain and Ireland in the areas Art, Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice

Solo Exhibitions include ‘Dealer Ties’ Higher Pictures, New York, ‘Everything Must Go’ Art in General, New York, ‘Selling America’ Silverstein Gallery, New York and Galway Art Centre, BIAD Birmingham, Limerick City Gallery of Art, OMAC, Belfast and Project Art Centre, Dublin

Exhibited in Groups shows in Ireland, UK, USA, Hungry, Australia and Italy.

Aisling Prior

Aisling Prior is the director of the Breaking Ground art commissions programme. She is a graduate of Philosophy and English, UCD, and of the Masters in Visual Arts, IADT. After a few years working in Paris, where she co-organised a major retrospective of Irish Cinema at the Centre Georges

Pompidou, she was the founder director of the Galway Film Centre, and was the Director of the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland, (VAI). Most recently, she curated the Art in the Life World conference and exhibition, Spring 2008. See www.breakingground.ie, www.artinthelifeworld.com.

Georgina Jackson

Georgina Jackson is a curator and writer. She completed a BA in History of Art and French at Trinity College, Dublin in 2000 and she obtained a first class honours in her MA in Visual Arts Practices (Curating) from IADT, Dun Laoghaire in 2005. From 2005 until 2008 she was Exhibitions Curator at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane where she was assistant curator on The Studio (2006) and co-organised the symposium Beyond the Studio (2007). She has curated exhibitions such as Ellen Gallagher Coral Cities, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; Ronan McCrea Medium (The End)/ Medium (Upside Down), co-curated with Vaari Claffey,

Return Gallery, The Goethe Institute and 5 scarlett row, Dublin; Left Pop - bringing it back home - a special project for the second Moscow Biennale, co-curated with Nicola Lees, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow; TACITA DEAN, co-curated with Christina Kennedy, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2007); Press Play, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2005); Room 106, La Stampa Hotel, Dublin (2004). She has edited numerous catalogues including TACITA DEAN, The Studio and Beyond the White Cube: a retrospective of Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland. She is a board member of Circa magazine and is on the curatorial board of the Goethe Institute, Dublin.

Pippa Little

Pippa Little is a curator of contemporary art and researcher based in Limerick.

Pippa is currently completing her PhD research, a study of artists making processes at LIT/LSAD. This was funded through the inaugural Shinnors Scholarship at LCGA (2003-2006) and an LIT research support grant (2007-2008).

Selected curatorial projects include The Colour of Surprise, Fresh, re-imagining the Collection, Excursions performance festival, Archiving Limerick, ReCollections and Corpus.

Pippa received an MA in Gallery Studies with distinction from the University of Essex. She also studied at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle and Falmouth College of Art. She is on sabbatical from Curator Audience and Access at LCGA.