To Care, to Curate. a Relational Ethic of Care

Curare: to care, to curate. A relational ethic of care in curatorial practice Sibyl Annice Fisher Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies November, 2013 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Sibyl Annice Fisher The right of Sibyl Annice Fisher to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Readers are respectfully advised that this document contains the names and images of Indigenous persons who are now deceased. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies for the international scholarship that enabled me to undertake this research project, and David Jackson for the initial conversation. For archival assistance, many thanks to Gary Haines at Whitechapel Art Gallery, Jennifer Page at the Research Center, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Janet Moore at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and Gary Dufour at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Thanks also to Aunty Stephanie Gollan at Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute. Thank you to Rayma Johnson for kind permission to use the image of Russell Page, and to Glen Menzies and Hetti Perkins for advice on reproducing work by Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Thank you to Pamela Quick at MIT Press for permission to use the catalogue cover of Inside the Visible, and Megan Young at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for permission to use the catalogue cover of fluent. Several others gave generous help and feedback, so thanks to Eddie Chambers, Andrew Renton, Deborah Cherry, David Hill, Ashley Thompson, Ken Belcher, Margareta Gynning, Luc Derycke, Sheila Scraton, George McKinney, Iain Poole and Margaret Poole. To Catherine de Zegher, thank you for your generous participation in my research. Your patience and sincere interest in my learning about curating as a feminist practice is very deeply appreciated. Deep thanks to Brenda L Croft, for your warmth and generosity in meeting my project with an open mind. I have greatly enjoyed working with you both and I hope this continues. I would like to thank my supervisors for their constant support. Thank you to Abigail Harrison- Moore for being a wonderful mentor since I first arrived in Leeds. Thank you to Griselda Pollock for all the hours given willingly; I have learned so much about care from working with you. Thank you to my colleagues and friends, particularly Pam Crawford, Zoë Copson, Ella S Mills, Francesco Ventrella, Amy Charlesworth, Lara Eggleton and Jo Heath for your friendship and generosity, and Lenka Vrabilkova, Daniel Mourenza, Ebony Andrews, Fiona Allen, Simon Constantine and Jan Cox for your warm camaraderie. Deep thanks also to Grandpa and Kath Fisher, John Mack, Chris Evans, Rebecca Mitchell and Bradley Dickerson for your assistance, enthusiasm and kindness. With love and gratitude to my family: Polly, Lin, Debbie, Brian and Shirley, and to my mother Lori, thank you for the depth of your support in many ways, it has enabled my studies to come to completion. And to Dave, thank you for caring for me and for my work. Abstract The central question that this thesis addresses is curatorial practice as an ethical practice, a practice of care. In the field of contemporary art and curatorial studies, the connection between curating and care is predominantly considered significant only in terms of the history of the curatorial care of collections, inscribed etymologically in the word ‘curator’ which derives from the Latin ‘cura’, which means ‘care’. Historical and discursive shifts in the later twentieth century have resulted in a situation where other affinities between care and curating are now almost entirely in eclipse. The thesis aims to re-establish the embeddedness of care in curatorial practice by posing the question of a specifically curatorial sense of care and responsibility for the ‘other’ in a relational, ethical sense. This is elaborated through two case studies, which have been selected for their relational conceptualisations, and engagement with a feminist and Indigenous/postcolonial politics of avoiding marginalisation and repression. My reading begins from the understanding that the ethical interweaves in several ways with the political and the aesthetic, as set out in Chapter One and Chapter Two. Part One presents the first case study, the curatorial practice of Catherine de Zegher and the exhibition Inside the Visible (1996). Chapter Three explores the development of de Zegher’s practice over the span of her career, and Inside the Visible through the archive, which is read for patterns of responsibility and acts of care. Chapter Four considers the exhibition as a widely-recognised feminist intervention, which may function as an instance of curatorial ethicality if it is not further subjected to contemporary repression in the literature. Part Two presents the second case study, the curatorial practice of Brenda L Croft and the co-curators of fluent in the Australian Pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997). Chapter Five maps the development of Croft’s practice, and through a reading of the archive presents fluent as a demonstrably effective intervention into the globalised art world. In this chapter, responsibility and care are also framed broadly in relation to a specifically Indigenous conception of shared values, which is largely characterised in terms of relationality. Chapter Six considers the significance of Indigenous women’s participation in Venice, and the precarity of fluent’s position in the recent discourse on contemporaneity. Its almost total neglect in the literature threatens the exhibition’s efficacy, which against the wider repression of the relationality of Indigenous cultural practices has arguably destructive effects. Finally, the Conclusion reflects on the research process and the way of reading developed in the thesis. Across the case studies, a distinctive ethos of care is detectable in relational practices of responsibility strategised and enacted by curators, and in their sensitivity to relationality on multiple levels. These modes of practice are argued to re-inscribe an ethical concept of care in the fabric of curatorial practice. It is hoped that the thesis presents a framework through which to read and learn from these curatorial instances of care, signalling one potential way to break the cycle of repression and marginalisation. Table of contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... 4 Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 5 Table of contents ....................................................................................................... 6 List of illustrations .................................................................................................... 1 Abbreviations and acronyms ................................................................................... 4 Notes on terminology ................................................................................................ 6 Chapter One. Introduction ...................................................................................... 7 The curatorial turn............................................................................................ 12 Feminist interventions in the histories of art.................................................... 19 Feminism and curating ..................................................................................... 23 Postcolonialism ................................................................................................ 29 Indigenous curatorial practices ........................................................................ 36 Chapter Two. Reading for the emergence of the ethical ..................................... 39 Ethics and curating ........................................................................................... 39 Codes of ethics ................................................................................................. 42 Museum ethics ................................................................................................. 45 Reading for the ethical in ‘feminism and curating’ discourse ......................... 47 Feminist ethics ................................................................................................. 53 Methods of analysis ......................................................................................... 60 Part One ................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter Three. Catherine de Zegher’s curatorial practice and Inside the Visible (1996) ............................................................................................................... 66 Catherine de Zegher as curatorial subject ........................................................ 66 Inside the Visible: A descriptive analysis ........................................................ 70 Other archival

Load more