Exhibition Uneducated, installation Gallery 2 (of 3 galleries), Counihan Gallery, Melbourne Australia. Image: Patrick Rodriquez
Exhibition Uneducated, installation Gallery 1 (of 3 galleries), Counihan Gallery, Melbourne Australia. Image: Patrick Rodriquez
Exhibition Uneducated at Counihan Gallery, Sydney Rd Brunswick, September 5th – October 5th 2014
Curator: KYM MAXWELL
Artists: Annette Krauss (N.L), Tom and Simon Bloor (U.K), Room 13 the early years (with Robert Fairley U.K), Elizabeth Newman, Antonia Sellbach, Nick Selentisch, Annabelle Kingston, Dan Arps, Lane Cormick, Peter Tyndall, Kym Maxwell, Nathan Gray, Sean Peoples, Anastasia Klose, Dr Peter Hill, DAMP and Emily Floyd.
RATIONAL:
‘Uneducated’ is an ambitious exhibition of artworks and projects that are sociological and educational in nature. It represents active forms of education in or around society, questioning knowledge, truth and the teacher / student dynamic. The exhibit explores education as a challenge to spectatorship in art. It reflects on the debate of the ‘educational turn’ in contemporary art discourse (in particular theories of Schiller, Ranciere and Bishop) and in this way reveals what Australian artists have done, or are doing, in relation to art educating and positioning audiences — contemporary European works within this field of inquiry will also be exhibited for the first time in Australia.
Artists represent varying vantage points of ‘knowledge and education’ as either active or passive experiences of learning. All works explore differing accessibilities of arts intellectual codes (subjective or objective as open or blocked communication) with each production (the making) a form of ‘knowledge’ its transmission kinetic, or arbitrary. Through autonomous and plural positions the ‘theory of knowledge’ in regards to the ‘educational turn’ is questioned.
Curation - Even the curatorial process is a focus with two curatorial projects by Kym Maxwell and Emily Floyd developed. The re-curation of the exhibition mid-show by a group 30 primary school children from Collingwood College aged between 6-9 with artist Emily Floyd highlights the language of institutional space and how it’s generalized to adults behaviours and perspectives. Child curatorial hang from 24th of September to October 5th.The exhibit seeks to highlight a spectators’ passive social constructivist stance through art and curating implying also the presence of progressive educational theories of learning through social engagement with art and other audiences.
In each cluster of artwork a reflection of the inter-generational modes of ‘teaching’ may be juxtaposed as artists use languages and codes in art. In some works a child’s perspective is re-contextualized. Some early career artists have been selected to create opportunities for their work to be situated in the same field as established artists to create dialogue. The show represents mediums, video, installation, sculpture, documentation, painting and ‘curation as subject’. Each medium challengingly illuminates a field of knowledge construction that is social, intellectual or meta-cognitive.
