They Do Things Differently There @ Talbot Rice

Walk into any home and you will be sure to find ‘stuff’; pictures, furniture, one or two ill-advised china dolls. Each of these objects will have a monetary value, but the worth of the object is bestowed upon it by the owner, or curator, you might say. We are all curators in a way, carefully arranging and organising our respective environments. These ideas of value and worth, collecting and archiving, are central to the new Talbot Rice exhibition... or at least I think they are.

Let’s just say it’s fitting that this particular exhibition takes place within the hallowed halls of a university gallery, because the key word here is academic. The curators (all eleven of them!), are themselves students in the process of gaining a masters degree in a subject that, like the exhibition, is ambitious and vague. This is a show about curating, curated by budding curators, and aimed at a curatorial audience. The actual art seems a little neglected, superfluous even, lost within an intellectual experiment. Certain pieces manage to rise above the clamour of curatorial interjection. Fragment by Ailsa Lochhead examines the idea of seemingly worthless objects placed within a gallery context, and David Raymond Conroy’s All the books I own but haven’t read stacked up in my house, in a place where the pile reaches from the floor to the ceiling brings an empathetic smile to ones face.

Some aspects of the show are interesting and innovative in their approach to exhibition organisation. The curators have fully embraced what they term ‘Digital Presence’; the utilisation of social networking sites and blogs in an effort to lay bare the curatorial process. Furthermore, features like making your own personal catalogue encourage the visitor to engage fully with the show. However, more art and a little less intellectual jargon please.