Reproduction is a title of the exhibition, currently displayed at Sion Hill Gallery (if that room can even be called a gallery, but that is another topic..).
It was curated by a Columbian Amy Navarrete with the help of Marcella Ossa as a part of the MA dissertation.
In the gallery sheet she wrote:
‘Colombia, maybe is not a place that comes to mind when thinking about art, but in the last few years Colombia has been starting to position itself in the international art market. Art fairs such as ArtBo (the international art fair of Bogota) have begun to attract galleries, collectors and curators . And although this is a great step for Colombian art and has made many artists of the country to be noticed by some of the greatest galleries in the world, for people outside the art market, the Colombian art is still almost unknown.
In a country like Colombia, for young artists, to show their work abroad is difficult as well as expensive, the mere fact of sending the original work outside the country represents a considerable expense. For this reason, this exhibition uses reproductions of works or works that are reproducible and in this way, give emerging Colombian artists the opportunity to show their work in an international context.
Reproduction takes advantage of new technologies to show the work of six young Colombian emerging artists. Through video, photography and 3D printing this exhibition tries to show different fields of contemporary Colombian art.
The exhibition is composed by 12 works by different artists, with different media and conceptual approaches, the parameters for the choice of the works were only two, that the artists were Colombian, and that their work could be sent by electronic means, for this reason the works do not share the same concept or the same narrative and instead of creating a forced narrative between the different works, the exhibition tries to be seen as a potpourri of works that, although they can relate to each other, it is the audience’s decision to assign them a narrative.’
Yes, it was the first question I asked Amy, what criteria did she have for choosing the artworks. At the first glance there is no real narrative, however dealing with the topics that are not stereotypical for Colombia (war, politics, drugs, poverty) is a context in itself. And of course, the fact that works are reproducible.
I felt a strong presence of displaying the dream-like world. Maybe also because of the fact that the exhibition was quite minimalistic, therefore poetic and tranquil.
Having only one small room, which is used for a passage between cafeteria and classrooms is not an easy task for a curator. However, Amy positioned everything on the spaces that allowed the artworks to breathe and people to admire them. It would actually be hard to invent a different set up. The ‘gallery’ is an awful space (so much for having a gallery space, art university…) and as a curator you need to work around it. At first glance the exhibition looks empty having almost everything on the walls and nothing in the space, however that might just be my feeling after seeing other exhibitions here. And placing big things in the space is practically impossible, how would people walk around then..
Another thing I noticed were the captions (yeah yeah, we all know it). And big kudos to Amy for not just sticking sticky notes on the wall. Yes, I’ve seen that on some other exhibitions here. Come on, people, you have proper curators in the house and never ask for help??
In addition of the artworks, there is also something interesting on display: Amy’s documentational video of these artworks, which were already set up in various places around Bath, however not all together.
Amy said:
‘Throughout my master, I became interested in the relationship between the art works and the space in which they are exhibited, especially when the art works are being show in a non-conventional spaces with a different aesthetic instead of to the convencional white cube. For this reason, I decided to exhibit the same works from the exhibition Reproduction in unconventional spaces, with different aesthetics, and to document how the works relates to space. This exercise of placement will allow me to experience how the different works react and behave with the different spaces, it’s also an attempt of activate a space through art, I hope that by placing the documentation next to the exhibition Reproduction which is carried out in the gallery of Sion Hill and has a white cube aesthetic, allows to observe the difference in the relation of the works and the spaces in which they are exhibited.’
And we all know how the artworks get a different meaning when they are not set up in a conventional gallery. I have to say it worked nicely.
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS:
- featured image: Marcella Ossa
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Research adventureS of a curator 