CIVIC Collaborative Curatorial Residency at Residency Unlimited New York. Bella Kerr & Amanda Roderick | October/November 2016
Read more about CIVIC
A collaborative investigation of the visible and invisible structures and infrastructures centred on and around the art gallery and other cultural organisations, considering the role of partnerships, dialogue, learning, opportunity and engagement.
The collaborative curatorial residency with Residency Unlimited was a busy and successful period. Intended as an exploratory residency, we used methods and ideas central to CIVIC to examine the gallery/arts organisations and city as dynamic, imaginative learning spaces. Our intentions were:
- to meet and speak with a range of people and organisations with the aim of understanding organisational structures, partnerships, funding and artistic and curatorial directions;
- to make on-going connections with artists, curators and organisations with a view to future projects;
- to develop our personal curatorial and artistic ambitions.
With RU, we arranged conversations to ask:
- How are location, site and architecture important when defining a gallery/other space and its artistic philosophy?
- For galleries/other, what are the connections to the city and wider community?
- How does partnership work and feed into an organisation’s programming and strategy?
- How do the smaller galleries, grass roots organisations, studio groups and collectives, work
- alongside each other in collaboration with the larger established venues?
- Are genuine creative partnership formed to the benefit of each organisation and the artists/others involved?
The support we received from Residency Unlimited enabled us to remove ourselves from day-to-day responsibilities to experience an extended period of engagement with others, and freethinking around future possibilities.
We conducted a great number of visits and meetings during our time in New York and gained valuable advice regarding residencies and programming, connections for the development of new projects and partnerships and information towards teaching, curatorial and artistic practice.
The organisations and individuals that helped us achieve this were:
Nathalie Angles, David Dean and staff at RU; RU Artists in Residence; Felicity Hogan and NYFA; Manon Slome and No Longer Empty; Bard Center for Curatorial Studies; Artist Doug Ashford; Friends of the High Line Wonder Walk Commissions with Matthew Jensen; Amy Wexler at Christies; Situ Architects; Artist Helen Dennis; Hannah Tierney at Five Myles; Michael Brennan at Pratt Institute; Brooklyn Grange Farm; Amber Moyles at The Drawing Center; Louise Bourgeois House; Judd Foundation; Anthony Allen at Paula Cooper Gallery; Mass MoCA and Ferrin Gallery (North Adams); Urban Glass; Ariele Dionne-Krosnik at MoMA; Kerri Ammirata at White Columns; Queens Museum; Brooklyn Museum; Harry Burke at Artist Space.
www.residencyunlimited.org
