Art Becoming Public

We are exploring situations that productively challenge and refine our understandings of ‘art’, ‘exhibition’ and ‘history’, mindful of what these terms might mean for the present.

Sunthorn Meesri, bot bat sommut (role), 1993. Performance at Tha Pae Gate, Chiang Mai as part of the second Chiang Mai Social Installation. Courtesy Uthit Atimana and Gridthiya Gaweewong.

Curating ‘global contemporary art’

How are understandings of the ‘global’ and the ‘located’ differently shaped through contemporary art presented to publics in disparate contexts and times? Including projects explicitly presenting global contemporary art and those focused instead on the transnationalism within nationalism or continental and diasporic practice.

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Curatorial experimentation

Experimentation with the exhibition form. Including innovations in the 1960s–70s to exhibit the ‘new art’ and to integrate conceptualist and feminist approaches; 1950s investigations into abstract environmental forms and audience participation; apartment-based ‘anti-shows’ in Soviet Moscow; and curator-led projects that test the exhibition’s potential for rewriting art history, or social intervention.

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Artistic experimentation in exhibition practice

How have artists experimented with what is possible with exhibitions? Including 1950s investigations into abstract environmental forms, with audience participation; apartment-based ‘anti-shows’ organised under state restriction; and artist-led festivals conceived as ‘social installation’.

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Exhibition and institutional histories

How do exhibitions connect with – or develop into – longer-term initiatives, through recurring events, instituent practices and institution building? Including monumental projects of state diplomacy and cultural politics as well as small-scale, transnational and para-institutional artist networks and initiatives.

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‘The Other Story’, 1989

Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain, Hayward Gallery, London, 1989–90 (touring to Wolverhampton and Manchester, 1990). ‘The Other Story’ (1989–90) united the art of ‘Asian, African and Caribbean artists in post war Britain’. Guest curated by artist Rasheed Araeen, it opened at the Hayward Gallery in London before touring to Wolverhampton and Manchester. Although the show met with mixed critical appraisal at the time, it has since proved fundamental for establishing the work of important neglected or emerging artists.

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Research partners

This research is developed in close relation with Afterall’s Exhibition Histories book series, doctoral students and the Exhibition Studies research master’s programme at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and with the support of our project partners: Asia Art Archive, based in Hong Kong; the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York; and the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, and documenta institut.