Students from Sarah Sparkes’ ‘How to Become an independent curator’ recently had the amazing opportunity to have their exhibition reviews featured on leading Contemporary Art site Artlyst.
Being a curator isn’t all about putting together shows - as students will learn on Sarah’s course. Research, and the ability to articulate why the shows of others are successful (or not!) is just as important a skill. Recently, upcoming curators from the ‘How to Become an Independent Curator’ course at CSM had the chance to have their reviews of recent London based shows published on Art website, Artlyst.
Students Virginia Bianchi, Hannah Edwards and Marta Zandri wrote a compelling review of Aaron Scheer’s first solo show at Annka Kultys Gallery, consisting of paper based works he creates through “swiping and screenshotting the screen of an iPad”.
By “layering carefully composed monochrome images or desktop folders, sometimes manipulated using brush strokes effects on Photoshop” the students write, Scheer “creates vivid compositions with vibrant colour contrasts” that examine and critique the ever increasing interdependency of man and social network.
A second pair of students, Leo Babsky and Qing Wei, focused their review on Rosa Aiello and Patricia Boyd’s minimal, multi-sensory journey through “domestic tragedy and a lost American Heartland” at Cell Project Space, pictured below.
The next group of upcoming curators, in a review written by student Jane Ross, focused on a group show at the Zabludowicz collection. The show, according to Ross, speaks to the essential vulnerability of Humankind through artworks from the late 20th century. Finally, the last group of students focused their review on a recent show at New Art Projects entitled Punish the Streets. This show, according to the authors, is a record and testimony to the club culture centred around Dalston’s legendary Vogue Fabric Designs (VFD). The work, write students Virginia Lee, Mari Loncar, and Xiaoyu Fan, is a “collective creative celebration of attitude; individual freedom, anti-sexism and gender equality.”
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Parquet, Room nr. 25, Third Floor, Obermühle (Ahnerhaus), Heidi Bucher, 1980 Zabludowicz collection, London, 2019. Courtesy Zabludowicz Collection Photo by Jane Ross.
In addition to featuring our students’ reviews, Artlyst also published a great feature on Sarah Sparkes. In the article, Sparkes, tutor of the How to Become an Independent Curator course, discusses how she launched her curating career, and what you can expect to learn from her short course.
"The course," Says Sparkes, "introduces students to the practical elements they need to begin independent curating themselves and is packed with useful information drawn from experience. There is some discussion of contemporary thought and writing around curating. There are talks from visiting curators – this term international curator Rob La Frenais gave a lecture. In addition, there is a day of gallery visits in which students meet curators and gallerists in their spaces, hearing about their work first hand. At the end of the course, students present individual proposals for an exhibition."
