[curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

[pauloneillp at aol.com]

Dear All,

Where to start? Joasia has invited me to introduce myself and to begin 
a CN discusssion. Let me introduce myself. My background is as an 
artist, curator and writer. I have a BA in Fine Art, MA in Architecture 
and Spatial Culture and just completed a theory-practice based PhD. 
Having worked between being an independent curatorial practitioner and 
running a number of public funded gallery programmes in Ireland and the 
UK between 1995-2003, I decided to embark on a PhD at Middlesex 
University in 2003 as a way of taking some time out from producing and 
making some time for reflection and to begin to understand the 
historical rise of the curator in the last twenty years. I became aware 
as to how little I had previously reflected upon what curators had done 
in the past and how the visibility of the figure of the curator that 
emerged in the 1990s had centred upon a few individuals. My submission 
‘Curating Cultures, the Culture of Curating: The Development of 
Curatorial Discourse since 1987’ was not only a means of looking back 
at historical precedents, but also as a way of getting to grips with 
the overlaps between my practice as a curator and academic. The basis 
of my PhD was a collection of 70+ audio interviews carried out with 
curators across the globe over the last four years. The recent 
anthology Curating Subjects, ed. Paul O’Neill (Open Editions, London, 
2007) was another way of engaging with multiple curatorial positions, 
again as a method of gathering material about exhibition histories but 
also adding to a more critical discussion around the curatorial 
intervention from the perspective of curators and artists reflecting on 
the practice of others, rather than so-called self-reflection of their 
own projects, which had become a kind of trope within the curatorial 
publishing field.

As a shorthand biography, this has led me towards my new post as the 
GWR Research Fellow in Commissioning Contemporary Art with Situations 
at the University of the West of England, where I am leading Locating 
the Producers (LTP) - a collaborative initiative between Situations at 
the University of the West of England, Bristol, ProjectBase in Cornwall 
and Dartington College of Arts. Locating the Producers is a three-year 
international study and events programme that will investigate the 
working processes of commissioners and curators across five different 
visual arts sectors:

1. Large-scale scattered-site/biennial exhibitions.
2. Commissioning agencies.
3. Gallery off-site programmes.
4. Temporary public art programmes within the context of regeneration.
5. Artist-curated initiatives.

Our ambition is to investigate how commissioners work internationally 
across these sectors with view to enabling knowledge exchange, 
providing opportunities for cross sector networking and bringing 
curators and commissioners together through public discussions, and a 
conference in the South West in 2009 and the publication which will 
document the research 2009. We are also planning to initiate a 
Situations Bursary where we will bring South-West based curators/ 
commissioners with us during our international research as way of 
feeding back into the region.

Our project aims to facilitate greater critical dialogue within the 
field of contemporary art commissioning by asking ‘How do the working 
processes of curator-producers of place-based temporary art commissions 
differ across visual art sectors?’ LTP hopes to create a new knowledge 
resource in visual arts commissioning of international significance 
with a view to both informing future commissioning processes and 
raising the standards of current curatorial practice in the region and 
nationally. Much of my primary research will be interview based, 
include site visits and in-depth case studies of particular recent 
projects of significance to have taken place or which are currently 
taking place in the UK and internationally.

Perhaps as a way of beginning a discussion, I could begin with some 
questions: What recent or current place-based commissioning projects in 
the South-West, nationally or internationally have played an important 
part in your work as curators or commissioners and why? What 
site-responsive commissioning have you been involved in as a curator? 
There seems to be a lot of commissioning going on in the South-West at 
the moment so is any of it any good?

I would be grateful for your responses.

Equally, you may have questions you wish to ask of me...

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes
Paul

Paul O’Neill
GWR Research Fellow
Situations Office
University of the West of England, Bristol.
07855384710






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