Featured Curator: Modern Edinburgh Film School (Alex Hetherington)

Our first featured curator of 2014 is Alex Hetherington, a visual artist and curator specialising in film, text, and sculpture. His projects take place under the auspices of the Modern Edinburgh Film School; an an institutional praxis that operates as a platform for his work and the work of his collaborators.

This month we ask him to give us some more insight into his curating practice, as well as giving some tips for those who haven’t had the benefits of his long experience and expertise.

Which organisations do you curate for?

Since its inception, Modern Edinburgh Film School has presented works at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Inspace, Talbot Rice Gallery, Rhubaba Gallery and Studios, Stills Gallery, Embassy Gallery, among others. In each of these cases, it has operated as a parallel or “prism” to these galleries’ programmes, acting as an accompanying discussion and dialogue.

In addition to working inside galleries, the Modern Edinburgh Film School has also produced its own series of publications, which has allowed it to present works independently. These limited print runs are displayed and distributed in many different locations and in different configurations, and are designed to be catalysts for conversation.

I have also presented works in galleries where no publicity has been created and only a few people were told of the work’s presence or existence. In these instances my work has been about the slight, appearance, experiment, and discretion.

My aim is to play with the ideas of film, its relationship to sculpture, and, in turn, its relationship to conversation.

When did you start curating and why?

I have worked with editing as practice for as long as I can remember, and my recent activities are born from a certain frustration about the terms and conduct of practice, as it relates the ideas of film, poetic form and the sculptural process. I explore these ideas through various forms, including, but not limited to, a horizontal plane of critical writing, making moving image work and sculptural things, sculptural events, screenings that are slightly skewed, and curatorial activities.

I also wanted to work with the idea of the veil; the title of my practice is a veil that disguises me. I am absent, and this allows different ideas, people, and artists to inhabit the terms of what I do.

Tell us about your most recent project

I recently presented, with Ella Finer, a “Salon of the Voice” on the 28th November 2013, at Cooper Gallery in Dundee. The event took its inspiration and provocation from Georgina Starr's exhibition "Before Le Cerveau Affamé" and her particular use of the voice.

Meeting for the first time and bringing together our shared interest in the way the voice performs inside and outside the artwork, Ella and I offered our own reflections on Starr's past, present and future work, as well as opening the floor to invite response, recollection and reverberation on the theme and its tangents.

This revolved around a spoken word recitation of ideas on the voice, with artists cited such as Catherine Sullivan, The Wooster Group, Fabienne Audeoud, Michelle Hannah, Ellen Cantor and Trisha Donnelly. In addition to this, I produced a publication called the Free Arc of Life, which speculates and observes on the work of Karen Cunningham, Allison Gibbs, Georgina Starr and Mairi Lafferty.

What has been your favourite project to work on?

One of my most interesting projects was with the Glasgow-based artist Lauren Gault. I presented her film and ceramic work at ESW for a three-day installation; the culmination of a series of exciting conversations we had about the application of filmic terms to other materials and conditions. We worked together to realise an exhibition where film and sculpture and the space that contained them were in parity.

This project happened at the same time as my work with the German artist, Ute Aurand. We screened, in conversation, her 16mm films at Stills Gallery, with artists Allison Gibbs and Joe Etchell operating the projectors, and Dr Sarah Neely, a film historian, introducing her work. The presence of the artist, who had agreed to come from Berlin to show at Modern Edinburgh Film School, and the configuration of artists, experience, process and engagement was very exciting for me. I was also very taken by Ute’s confidence in me and the project. The material of film, her camera, and the way she works was an incredibly rewarding experience.

What is your approach to working with artists/collections?

My approach to working with artists is centred on conversation and discussion. These discussions, commences the work, and is at the core of everything I do.

It is about a commitment to their work over time, in an understanding of the way in which it is made and how it can be seen. I think this is all about trust. I often try and work with people whose work I find difficult or I don’t understand.

How do you engage the audience with your exhibitions?

Most of my projects create publications and printed editions that include text and expanded documents. I hope this allows audience engagement in events that are mostly short-lived or one-off, and where very few people can attend. The aim is to give visibility to events that can be practically invisible otherwise.

What was the last exhibition you visited?

Lucy Skaer at Tramway

Tell us about a curator whose work you admire and why

I have great admiration for the practice of Anne Colvin who is based in San Francisco. Although she now concentrates solely on her moving image practice (which I also really like), she used to run a space called TART from her apartment and created a printed edition series called SKANK BLOC BOLOGNA. This was a loose leaf journal of collected materials drawn from a project called SEMINA in the 1960s in the Bay Area by Wallace Berman .

“Berman was that second-hand avant-garde’s doyen, publisher and mythographer, and his magazine Semina was its Documents.”

I also really like Maria Fusco.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start curating?

I think they should ask themselves why they want to start curating. I would also try and wash yourself out of ideas about style and expectation. I think that there is evolving a convention of “how to curate”; a to-do list that sometimes starts to become repetitive.

I like projects that have duration, have time between their appearances, are made for different kinds of audiences, have echoes, reflections, and alternatives. Operate as a receiver. Being a curator isn’t about being a referee.

What's next?

I am working on a group show that will happen at GoMA in Glasgow in Spring 2014, and am putting together a programme of works about film time, duration, and place that I want to call “The National Review of Live Art”. This is based on vague recollections of my working at the real NRLA at Third Eye Centre in 1990.

Alex currently has a call for participants for the GOMA project here on CuratorSpace. To find out more or to apply, click: http://www.curatorspace.com/opportunities/detail/the-national-review-of-live-art-atelier-public/30

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