flow

Curatorial outcome from BLINDSIDE Gallery’s Emerging Curator Program; exhibited at BLINDSIDE Gallery Dec 2021
Mentor: Amelia Wallin
Exhibiting Artists: Zia Atahi, Aida Azin, Tessa-May Chung, Leonie Leivenzon, Michael Tuhanuku
Contributing Writers: Maya Hodge, John Oh, Luke Patterson

Flow begins with water. With the oceans, rivers, and waterways which connect us. Seldom noticed these days, though my people would follow them like the veins of the earth. Understanding innately and intimately that this is where life is sustained, but that this is also a place of delicate balance.

Drawing from my own artistic practice, the starting point for this exhibition are bodies of water – the oceans, rivers, and waterways which connect us – to closely intertwine with other practices involved with water: investigating concepts of liminality/thirdspatial relationships, hydrofeminism, and eco-practices. Flow as the curatorial, art is the ocean.

The space of liminality is often thought of as the limbo we dwell in before we arrive where we need to be – but really, there is no ‘before and after,’ there is simply the ‘and.’ Like the ocean, we, and everything around us, is always in process. But also, in delicate (and precarious) balance. To acknowledge this space is to recognise that we can be at once inside and outside, understanding and not understanding, making and un-making – always caught in that beautiful balance that is to remain in constant change. To acknowledge this space is to make kinder spaces. To create the possibility for allowing our very porous selves to be open to one another. To be in flow together.

I have been thinking lately on how I was told that exhibition-making as a practice and format is tired. Perhaps it is just us who is tired. Challenging this, I propose a curatorial project that is to remain in flux in its duration – a place where artistic process is privileged alongside the final artistic outcome. Taking advantage of BLINDSIDE’s layout, I hope to transform Gallery 2 into a process space whilst allowing Gallery 1 to remain as the main presentation room. Gallery 2 will be available for artists to continually build upon their work (should they so choose), and this process will remain visible to the public. Every Friday (or every second), I will be readjusting the install of Gallery 1 to accommodate for any new developments. The catalogue will also grow throughout the exhibition, and visitors will have a change to be able to insert new additions as the writing also develops.

Like the ocean, we, and everything around us, is always in process. To acknowledge this space is to recognise that we can at once be inside and outside, understanding and not understanding. To acknowledge this space is to build kinder spaces. This exhibition not only seeks to challenge the format of exhibition-making and expand the role and engagement of audiences in artistic practices, but to engage with the possibilities of how we generate knowledge (and how we do so together). In a time where a lack of stability has shaken society, I hope to instead embrace what it is to constantly be in flux, and to be comfortable dwelling in the ‘and’.

Flow, #1 re-curate 08.12.21
Image credit: Nick Archer