Recognizing that there are few opportunities for emerging professionals to receive practical training and guidance, and reflecting the potential for building a pan-African curatorial network, the Curatorial Intensive in Johannesburg, the first Intensive produced in Africa, was developed by ICI in collaboration with The Bag Factory Artists’ Studio. The program was targeted toward self-motivated individuals—working independently or in institutions in Africa—who would benefit from a week of intensive conversations around the issues and questions that regularly arise for curators. The decision behind organizing this intensive recognize the importance of creating a platform for dialogue that will evolve into a network for collaboration and exchange among emerging and mid-career curators.

The selected 11 participants came from 6 different African countries (Mali, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and Uganda), and there were 2 auditors from South Africa and Belgium. There were 4 male and 7 female participants, whose ages ranged from 26 to 50, which shows the program was attractive both for people at beginning stages of their career as well as to curators with broader experience.

The Intensive, Contemporary Curatorial Practice, took place in Johannesburg March 7-12, 2013. It examined the pragmatics of organizing exhibitions, while addressing the specificities of curating in the African context. The program considered experimental approaches to exhibition-making and other curatorial forms, as well as new ways of working within institutions. Speakers were strategically selected based on their knowledge and expertise, and also for the focus they could bring to the program. The criteria for the selection of speakers emphasized professionals working in Africa that are building infrastructure and promoting both a local and international dialogue, as well as two speakers that provided a global south perspective.

An international roster of speakers was invited to lead the seminars, site visits, individual meetings, and roundtable discussions. Speakers and faculty included: ICI staff María del Carmen Carrión (Associate Director of Public Programs & Research) and Renaud Proch (Executive Director), as well as Zdenka Badovinac (Director of Moderna Galerija/Museum of Modern Art, Ljubliana), Koyo Kouoh (Artistic Director of RAW MATERIAL COMPANY, Dakar), Riason Naidoo, (Director of South African National Gallery, Cape Town), Gabi Ngcobo (Creative Director of the Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg), Michelle Marxuach (Co-Director of Beta-Local, Puerto Rico), Didier Schaub (Co-founder of Doual’art, Douala), Zen Marie (Artist, curator, and manager of The Substation, Johannesburg), Nontobeko Ntombela (independent curator, Johannesburg), Kelly Gillespie (Co-Founder Johannesburg Workshop of Art and Theory,  Johannesburg), and Sara Hallatt (Director of The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios, Johannesburg). 

The week-long course focused on exhibition development—from building working relationships with artists to the theoretical aspects of understanding how to turn a concept into a project—and explored key curatorial strategies for working in a range of exhibition spaces. Each day of the Curatorial Intensive, participants convened as a group for workshop seminars led by the invited professionals who addressed critical topics in curatorial practice. These included the specific issues of curating in the African context, curating in the public sphere, durational pedagogical projects, the production of events, as well as working within institutions and engaging context.

Alongside the sessions conducted at The Bag Factory, participants convened at VANSA, The Substation, and the Wits Art Museum (WAM) in Wits University. These visits served as case studies for the many issues pertinent to curating, from understanding the commissioning and installation process with artists, to working with various institutions, funders, and audiences. Central to all sessions were conversations discerning relevance and urgency, audience and publics, and the considerations between history and politics in relation to issues addressed in curatorial programming.

Throughout the program, each participant took part in two individual meetings with select ICI staff and guest lecturers. These 20 to 30 minute sessions provided the opportunity for one-on-one advising on topics that were specifically relevant to developing their project proposals.

At the beginning of the program, participants presented their project proposal to their peers and ICI staff. At the end of the program, they were required to give a longer presentation that outlined their full proposals after developing the concepts over the course of the program. The final presentations were held in a semi-public, professional forum where participants had the opportunity to receive feedback from their colleagues and the general public. The public symposium was extremely well attended, with an audience of approximately 60 people, who were eager to learn more about the program and engage with the participants.

The final stage of the program allows participants the possibility of publishing their written proposals on ICI’s website. Giving them the opportunity to revisit their ideas and promote it in an international platform. Successful proposals will go up on ICI’s website by the end of June.

This workshop brought together an emerging group of curators that were able to connect with each other and also meet a more established group of African curators. This allowed for the formation of a cross-generational pan-African network. Being the pilot program, ICI expects that in future intensives some of the participants would be involved as presenters and facilitators, as has happened in the past with other programs.

Through the open dialogue methodology implemented during the week participants learned from each other’s practices, shared mutual interests, and were able to provide peer-to-peer feedback.

Participants included

Mika Conradie, Josh Ginsburg, Hama Goro, Nkululeko Khumalo, Portia Malatjie, Bongo Mei, Robinah Nansubuga, Karen Obling, Marie Helene Pereira, Mthabisi Phili, and Maria Fidel Regueros.

Chris Paul Daniels shares with us the trailer for his sixty minute feature film made during his Fellowship Residency at Kuona Trust, Kenya,

Kuona Trust was founded in Nairobi, Kenya in 1995 to serve the visual arts and has since worked with over a thousand artists. It provides studio space, training and opportunities as well as hosting international artist workshops and residencies- Kuona is the only organisation of it’s kind, working exclusively with visual artists, in East Africa.

Based in the heart of the capital, Kampala, work has just reached completion on the addition of further studio space to support the development of practising artists in Uganda. The space will be purposely designed to promote dialogue and exchange amongst resident artists and will include a central communal workshop space.

32˚ East additionally intend to offer residents introductions to audiences, collectors, other artists and cultural practitioners, as well as informal tuition and guidance through a peer-led working environment- in both artistic and professional development.

32˚ East is a centre for contemporary Ugandan art which has recognised remarkable untapped and un-fostered potential in the Ugandan arts scene.

Gasworks announces the purchase, expansion and

development of its gallery, studios and participation space in London with a major  Arts Council

England pledge of £1 million.

Gasworks, a non-profit contemporary visual arts organisation based in London, has received a £1million commitment from Arts Council England towards the purchase and renovation of its building. This is the first of a two-stage process and launches a £1.8 million capital campaign to secure the future of the organisation. The capital development project will represent a significant investment in emerging artists and in the cultural life in the capital.

Gasworks provides studios for London-based artists and delivers a programme of international artists’ residencies, exhibitions and participatory activities. Gasworks is also the hub of the Triangle Network, a network of artists and art organisations in over 30 countries around the world.

Securing a sustainable future for Gasworks

The pledge from Arts Council England is a huge step towards realising Gasworks’ once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase and refurbish the building that has been its base for the last twenty years. The redevelopment will:

• Secure for the long-term one of the few art spaces in the Vauxhall area, where art is both made and experienced.
• Create a new fit-for-purpose participation space, to host community-led workshops for adults and children living in Gasworks’ vicinity.
• Build two additional studio spaces for artists, addressing the need for workspaces in South London at a time when major studio providers are closing their buildings.
• Enhance the ‘experience of art’ for visitors, providing a larger and more flexible exhibition space and creating better communal facilities.
• Improve the building’s environmental performance, upgrading the heating system and building insulation.

Need for the project

The redevelopment will secure and increase Gasworks artists’ studio provision, responding to a critical and identified need for centrally located, affordable facilities where artists can develop their practice. Securing Gasworks’ future aligns with the Mayor of London’s Cultural Strategy: Cultural Metropolis, which identifies the continuing pressure on artists from increasing rents on short-term studio space: “the temporary use of vacant buildings for artists’ workspace has dominated the provision of artists’ studios which perpetuates the trend for artists studios to kick start regeneration, but then become victims of it when prices rise”.

The timely purchase and refurbishment of Gasworks will safeguard the future of its provisions in an area of London undergoing extensive regeneration including the Vauxhall and Nine Elms’ redevelopment (with new landmarks such as The Tower, the new American Embassy, Embassy Gardens and the Albert Embankment regeneration project), and the creation of ‘Vauxhall One’ Business Improvement District (BID).

In developing the project Gasworks has carried out extensive consultation with artists, local residents, community leaders and local teachers. The London borough of Lambeth has endorsed the project by awarding a grant to support the development phase of the project. Read more Read the rest of this entry →

Danilo Correale shares with us the trailer for his short film made during his Fellowship Residency at Helena Producciones. Below is a short introduction to the film.

- Part one – La Version de las chicharras

Starting from this quote ‘Sabido es que a las chicharras les rasca el sol y cantan para olvidarse. Cuando no cantan, duermen un sueño tonto. Cuando cantan en exceso, revientan’  from A. Caicedo cult’s book “ Que Viva La Musica!“ I tried to investigate, through interviews with academics and musicologist , the relationship between the colombian popular culture of Salsa (music and dance) as revolutionary act, and its historical legacy, connecting cultural identity and urban/social transformation into a visual essay.

- Part two – La Version de Ariel

In the second part of the project I tried to narrate a little history of a community radio, Oriente Stereo, recently attacked ( Silenciata ) by a street gang, in order to underline the very meaning of the oral tradition, as essential in the process of constitution of a community able to resist the exploitation through the cultural exchange activated by the speech.

For more information about the artist and his practice and involvement with Helena Producciones take a look at this article in Frieze Magazine

Emily Crane is a PhD student at the University of East Anglia. Her PhD focuses on the contemporary artist exchanges within the Triangle Network, with specific focus on Africa and South Asia and is entitled Navigating the void: The Triangle Network of artist-led initiatives. Crane has become a contributor to the Triangle blog. In this, her first blog post Crane shares her experience of looking through the archive of Triangle activity, currently housed at Gasworks, London, and discusses the nature of the archive more generally.

The infallibility of the archive has long been exposed to its more fragmentary and partial nature,  capable of being utilised, manipulated and distorted.  What is included and excluded is a political concern, and what constitutes an archive has been questioned.

With this in mind, it is almost impossible to conceive of what an archive of a network such as Triangle might look like. How can a multifaceted set of relationships across the world be represented in any single place, and how can the explosive creative activities that happen throughout the network be represented by administrative papers, photographs and booklets?

Considering these nonsensical questions, I have nevertheless been spending much time pouring through the archival boxes stored at Gasworks. Aware of the partiality of the stories such an archive might suggest to me, I continue to look with the addiction of a treasure hunter with my metal detector in hand. The boxes hold over twenty years of materials that have been accumulate through the London office: correspondences in the form of letters, cards, faded faxes and emails;  reports and meeting minutes; funding applications; newspaper clippings, gallery flyers, workshop catalogues, artist postcards; and the occasion sketch, artist publication, poster or workshop related remnant. Although much of the materials I have been considering are tied to specific logistical arrangements for workshops or studio buildings, there is a wealth of material collected that more generally pertains to events happening in many artworlds across the globe. Read the rest of this entry →

The Mirrored Hammer Istanbul Special Part 2 by Andyabbott on Mixcloud

Included in the mix:

A conversation with Kaba Hat (recurs throughout)
Street musicians and city sounds (recurs throughout)
Ricochet live at Babylon
Kim Ki O live at Peyote
Elizabeth live at PiST
Excerpt from SHARE sessions at Arkaoda
Grup Ses Beats live at Peyote
Poster-İti live at Peyote
Barıştık mı- Göstembil Project live at Peyote

Artist and film maker Chris Paul Daniels (originally from Rotherham, South Yorkshire) has been selected to take part in the Triangle Network International Fellowship programme at Kuona Trust, Nairobi, Kenya as resident Fellowship artist.

Take a look at Chris’ blog of his time at Kuona here

Daniels’ work is characterised by participation with the public and experimental documentation of communal perspectives and memories regarding geographical location. He has exhibited work nationally and internationally, including BFI Southbank, IKON Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery, National Media Museum, FACT and Cornerhouse. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he won the Deutsche Bank Award for Art in 2010 for his collaborative project with Maria Anastassiou, Kelvin Brown and OKO Lab.

The Networked blog was created in the lead up to the conference Networked: Dialogue and Exchange in the Global Art Ecology, which was held at Bloomberg, London on the 26th and 27th of November 2011. The conference brought together different views on network and collaborative practices, which were explored through case studies and presentations from artists, curators, researchers and policy makers amongst others.

Following the conference, this blog continues to function as an open platform for debates over themes, issues, strategies and ambitions around networks and their need, role and function. Additionally, it is a platform for zooming in on projects, research, articles, videos and sound recordings relating to the different Triangle Network activities. Overall the blog maintains the spirit of Triangle, one of international dialogue and exchange, and aims to be a space to showcase the vibrancy of the Network.

Uganda’s Female Creatives (3) from 32º East | Ugandan Arts Trust on Vimeo.

32º East, Orange and Makerere University have joined forces to document and give exposure to Uganda’s leading female artists and creatives. This is part three of a series and documents four more talented and dynamic women:

Violet Nantume
Robinah Nansubuga
Margaret Nagawa
Lillian Mary Nabulime