The Michaelis Graduate's Catalogue is available for download, and you can get it here. It's quite a good catalogue as far as these things go, with a pretty, shiny hardcover and a two double page spreads for each graduate. Their were some lines in the catalogue, however, that disturbed me. From Pippa Skotnes', the school's director, preface reads the following:

"Curatorship is alive and well in the city and, indeed, everywhere in the art world, but for the most part it is a pretty meaningless activity that provides 'the curator' with the opportunity to raise money, assemble a collection of works under a heading and, as if there were more to it than that, lay claim to the act as something creative or meaningful. Young artists, (and older ones too, for that matter) often drawn into the game, will produce a piece for such shows, or a mini-installation and caught up by the possibility of catching the eye of a foreign curator or a critic make, in haste, works that are nothing more than one-liners, or witty visual comments on small concerns."

To put it into context, she is speaking about how hard the graduates worked to produce their current work, and how much time and research went into that process, all of which is something I couldn't agree with more. This is a particularly strong body of students who deserve the kudos for their hard work. However, there are several points that she makes that anger me somewhat, and don't show a particularly balanced view of the local art scene or the machinations of the contemporary art world. Firstly, the idea that curatorship is alive and well in the city is a gross overstatement. In fact, I would go so far as to say curatorship is festering under a rock, undernourished and disdained, especially the type of independent curatorship that would be able to breathe fresh air into the industry. All the shows I saw this year either did not have a professional curator or the work was shoddy. Some iniatives have cropped up to train young curators, such as Cape's programme for the new year, Centre for African Studies Young Curator's Workshop, and these should be applauded. To go further and call curating a meaningless and uncreative field is discouraging, until it is recognised as an intellectual and useful force that drives the art world it will continue to fester. Curating is like the Google of the contemporary artworld, a system that organises and presents information. You won't always like what you find, like the way you might dislike porn on the grounds of morality, or blogs as populism, but you can't deny it brings that information out, and you're living in a backwater if you don't use it.

Finally, to think that artists only produce work for these shows to attract a foreign curator, like some slut in an abbreviated dress, is to insult their reasons and love for what they do. And to call that work a one-liner is to misunderstand that sometimes the shorter jokes are funnier. Andrew Putter's recent I'll Love You More is a one liner, but a very very good one.

Labels: 4th Years, Curatorship, Michaelis, Pippa Skotnes