When I wrote about the first exhibition (at London’s Terrace Gallery) in this series of joint shows curated by the Glasgow-based artist Toby Messenger, I said that artists need each other. The central thesis of that first show was the conviction that the work of a curator is not just to bring artworks together for the delight or education of the viewer, but to create and encourage relationships and perhaps even new collaborations between the artists themselves.
This show brings some of those same works and artists to Glasgow and also includes new artists and new work, some of it directly inspired by the connections fostered in London. What started as a largely unconscious activity of assembling images online that “caught the eye” is turning into a loose but meaningful community of practice including artists at every stage of their careers and development.
As viewers, we are so rarely encouraged to think about what it means to mount a show: the seemingly endless emails, the logistics of shipping and insurance and wrapping and unwrapping, the physical challenge of hanging, the production of a catalogue, the costs, the conversations, the stresses, and the joy when it all finally comes together. In Messenger we see a curator that is less the self-appointed guardian or bearer of culture and much more a co-participant in the emergence of meaning. His role is, in the words of Kate Fowle, “more flexible and therefore also more vulnerable”. Here then, to paraphrase Szeeman, is an enthusiast, an administrator, an author of introductions, a postal depot regular, a van driver, a hanger, and a contributor.
Like Toby, many of us are also occupied by that most informal process of art collecting: bookmarking Instagram posts, perhaps saving favourite images to our phones. Unlike Toby, we might never think about how the act of viewing those images together creates connections and meaning, or the impact on artists when we view their work next to the work of others. This show is an opportunity to do just that.
Dr. Catherine Owen
References
Fowle, K. (2007). Who cares? Understanding the role of the curator today. Cautionary tales: Critical curating, 10-19. Szeemann, H “Does Art Need Directors?” in ed. Carin Kuoni, Words of Wisdom: A Curator’s Vade Mecum on Contemporary Art (New York: Independent Curator’s International, 2001), p. 167.
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