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The Shoe Horn April 10- May 10 2009 Four artists shoe-horned into one group show. Bradford Bailey
Curating group shows in the contemporary art world consists of presenting bodies of work by different artists and drawing certain comparisons between them. It is a practice borrowed from its academic cousin, the museum. In the academic world the museum has a duty to show its collection in various ways, and the duty of its curators is to present historical works for educational purposes. Contemporary galleries do not have the same motivation and instead present bodies of work within a theme through which the curator wishes the viewer to see it. In the context of ‘the death of the author’ (Roland Barthes) art is no longer necessarily read as the artist intended. The artist has been demoted to mere maker and it is the responsibility of the curator to be objective and allow for ways in to which the viewer can read meaning in the work. The curator-as-artist is an important role but in the often market driven comtemporary art-world the ‘gallerist-as-curator-as-artist’ is presenting work that has been displayed as an attempt at intellectualising the work and making it more commercially viable to the collector. Group shows by their very nature serve to draw attention to the diversity of contemporary art practice but increasingly it seems the ways in which bodies of work are presented has become tenuous. The Shoe Horn is a show that draws no comparisons between the artists work, other than perhaps their differences. The artists have been chosen as they represent a broad spectrum of contemporary practice. Don’t confine any interpretations of the work merely to any common denominators.
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