Pumphouse Gallery

Tue. 5th of October 2010

Gallery: Pumphouse gallery

Battersea Park, London

Opening of the exhibition: The Magic Show

From: 6 October - 19 December 2010

The Pumphouse gallery is situated in a very beautiful part of London, Battersea Park. When I sit on the bench in the park because I got there too early for the curators talk, I experience a very relaxed and comfortable feeling because of this quite environment that almost looks like a fairy tale. It’s a good feeling before visiting an opening of an exhibition.

The curators talk by the curators, Jonathan Allen (artist) and Sally ‘O Reilly (writer), at the beginning of the evening was very interesting. Not only to hear what they had to say about the exhibition, but also in what way they would communicate it to the visitors and in what order they showed us around their curated exhibition. What they were mainly talking about was the artworks, what their meaning is and how they perceived it. Of 2 artworks they explained why they were hanging in front of (or near) each other. That was interesting because that gave me insight in how they made that decision.

And then I asked myself:

Why would a curator’s talk mainly be about the art works? Why not about the way of exhibiting? Why would they place this work on the ground floor and that other work on the top floor? I think if they had talked about the way that they have build up this exhibition, the visitor would have gotten a better idea and insight of what some of the works mean to the curator and why it, according to them, deserves its spot in this exhibition. I was also curious what their personal connection with magic is (since that is the title of the exhibition) and how they found the artist that they wanted to show.