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Artist Profile|Issue 62EDITOR’S NOTEWhen an artist wins the Archibald, Australia’s most prestigious portrait prize, they achieve fame well beyond the Australian art world. Blak Douglas (a.k.a. Adam Hill) won last year, witha towering three-metre-high painting of his friend, Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens, titled Moby Dickens, 2022. The picture was part climate-change devastation and part art-world dirty business. Blak Douglas is an artist admired among artists, and this deeply politicised painting is from a long history of activist works – paintings, prints, performances, public art – demonstrates his dogged perseverance as he expresses his experiences. As writer and curator Djon Mundine comments in his cover essay on Douglas, “Adam’s self-belief is fresh, consistent, and remains unbounded.”Nasim Nasr had to leave Iran to be able to choose her experiences. The idea of choice, especially for…3 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Lucy Guerin What is that Distance?As a high-schooler, Guerin lost interest in the dance classes she had been taking since childhood, “distracted by adolescence.” This distraction struck in Adelaide, in the late 1970s, and it prefigured what would become several hall marks of her work: an interest in what it is like to experience a body, rather than in how we might configure that body to its most pleasing effect, a delight in slowness, and the pursuit of a certain indirectness which should not be confused with indifference. In the expanse between her initial distraction and the present, Guerin has built a remarkable archive of steps. These stretch across both her independent choreographic projects and twenty-one years’ worth of collaboration with her Melbourne-based dance company, Lucy Guerin Inc (LGI).Like most artists’ bodies of work, Guerin’s…8 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62AWARENESS INTO ACTION OLAFUR ELIASSON“I think an experience is not something that just happens to us, it’s something we choose to do,” Olafur Eliasson opined. The Icelandic–Danish artist was speaking to the press about his new site-specific installation Under the weather, 2022, an elliptical structure suspended at eight metres above the public courtyard of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The work’s disorienting moiré effect, created by the interplay of overlying patterns, altered the appearance of the space’s strict orthogonal architecture, making its perfect square seem rectangular, and the sculpture’s elliptical shape appear perfectly round. Like in many of the artist’s works, recognising the simplicity of the mechanism behind the sensory illusion can be as jarring as its effect. And that, in fact, is part of the artist’s message. “We are never really objective,”…10 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62CAROLINE ROTHWELL FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONSI speak to Caroline Rothwell in the days before Christmas. She’s still busy in the studio. It’s a family affair – her daughter behind her working away on a sculptural work. Caroline is working through ideas that are driving the development of an upcoming exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, in March. “I really quite enjoy being in the studio. It feels like I’m buzzing at the moment, so I’ve tried to make the most of it!”There are a series of sculptures that she shows me by way of introduction to her practice. We go past various works, focussed on ideas of equilibrium and balance in the natural world.She shows me a series of steel sculptures and experiments from the past few years. “I had to stop making those because it…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62WIN a Blak Douglas PrintBlak Douglas is based in Sydney and descends from the Dhungatti peoples of the NSW Mid-North Coast. In 2022, he was awarded the Archibald Prize for portraiture from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Artbank, and the National Museum of Australia.SUBSCRIBE NOW:online subscribe.artistprofile.com.auby phone 02 8227 6486by post Artist Profile Subscriptions, PO Box 161, HORNSBY NSW 1630SUBSCRIPTION DEAL□ 1 year / 4 issues @$69.00□ 2 years / 8 issues @$119.00This is a:□ New Subscription□ Renewal□ GiftBACK ISSUES (Issues 1-61 subject to availabilty)$24.99 each plus package and delivery□ Back issue number:PAYMENTI enclose my cheque/money order for $Apayable to Artist Profile Pty Ltd OR please charge my:□ MasterCard□ VisaMY DETAILSGIFT RECIPIENT’S…2 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Sydney Modern A Crystal Palace Full of DreamsMy first memory of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) was visiting the gallery as a young fellow in the early 1960s, with my father. Striding across The Domain towards the Walter Vernon building, with its honey-coloured classical columns, confidently poised between the city and what was then a working harbour, we were greeted on the steps by the then-Director of the gallery, the painter and photographer Hal Missingham. A close friend of my father, Missingham gave us a guided tour and spoke at length with some passion about his plans to improve the quality of the collection (still an issue), and to expand the gallery by building a new wing; that extension is now known as the Captain Cook Wing.So, it comes as no surprise when I…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Go Figure The Germanos CollectionRelationship. Joanna Braithwaite’s portrait of loved but departed Pep per, wearing a carrot, is in the “family portraits” section, with the recent Caroline Zilinsky Weimar Republic–referencing double portrait of Max and Gaibrielle Germanos and Huxley. The artist Euan Macleod has curated the Macquarie University Art Gallery’s current exhibition from the Germanos collection. Macleod has selected others of Max and Gabby. The lovely 2021 Swimmers for Gabby group portrait of their children by Clara Adolphs, Adolphs’s portraits of Gabby’s father and of Max’s parents and brother will be included, together with Vanessa Stockard’s of each of their children, Grace, Maddison, and Alec.These family portraits are a very small element of this big collection, but they provide a way to encapsulate the experience of a first visit to the Germanos home. Macleod’s…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62THE TORRES STRAIT 8 A SACRED FIGHTFor over sixty thousand years, Torres Strait Islanders have maintained ongoing connections to their lands, seas, skies, and culture. However, without immediate action, this will soon change. As greenhouse gas emissions accelerate global warming, Torres Strait Islanders find themselves on the frontline of rising sea levels, flooding, unpredictable winds, and coastal erosion, to name but a few of the devastating effects. In response to the worsening climate crisis, “Our Islands, Our Home” was formed by Torres Strait Islanders who demanded the Australian Government take immediate action so that they may remain on their island homes. As part of this campaign – supported by 350.org Australia – eight claimants from Zenadh Kes (the Torres Strait), known as the Torres Strait 8, took the Australian Government to the Human Rights Committee (HRC)…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62PHILIP WOLFHAGEN A LIGHT ON THE MIDLANDSWolfhagen believes “it was inevitable” that the Midlands would eventually become the subject of his work. The artist grew up just outside Longford – a small town on the northern Midlands – and moved back to the area twenty-five years ago. At the time of my visit to his home and studio, the surrounding paddocks are a bleached yellow, separated by bands of green foliage following snaking creeks. The scene is a world away from the wilderness landscapes usually featured in Wolfhagen’s work. Wolfhagen observes that this work “could be continuing the tradition of the pastoral.” However, the subject is also deeply personal, as he notes, “I’m living in the landscape, I’m farming in the landscape, I’m painting in the landscape.”Wolfhagen’s exhibition features what the artist terms “secular altarpieces,” which…4 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62KARLA DICKENS | EMBRACING SHADOWSCampbelltown Arts Centre is hosting Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens’s survey exhibition Embracing Shadows, on display until 12 March 2023. The show is comprised of an impressive number of works spanning thirty years of practice, and the result is both evocative and powerful. The exhibition is sprawling, and spreads out across the entirety of the gallery spaces, where each room highlights thematic chapters of the artist’s long career.Born in Sydney on Gadigal Country in 1967, Dickens is of Wiradjuri, Irish, and German descent. Having trained primarily as a painter at the National Art School, over time her practice has evolved to include more sculptural tendencies, with a refined focus on mixed-media materials and found objects. The pull towards found objects has been a lifelong fixation, and Dickens has stated that this…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62BORROWING FROM THE PAST TO CREATE THE FUTURE SERA WATERS: FUTURE TRADITIONSSera Waters’s significance as a leading South Australian artist was firmly cemented in 2022 with two major projects exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA). Her series Storied Sail Cloths, 2021, was included in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, curated by Sebastian Goldspink, and in November her solo project Sera Waters: Future Traditions was launched in AGSA Gallery 8.Sera Waters: Future Traditions brings together several years of exploration, investigation, and making supported by the 2020 Guild house Fellowship. Waters is known for her methodical research and revitalisation of traditional textile and sewing practices, and the Fellowship enabled time for reflection and creative development. The focus of this project — in which Waters is artist, collector, and curator — is to imagine a future for us…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62FIONA CURREY-BILLYARDAn artistic life was inevitable for Currey-Billyard, who descends from a “family of artists,” her mother a visual artist, and her father a collaborator who also wrote limericks. Growing up, Currey-Billyard had always drawn, a practice “just given” in the household. She studied at East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School), and rather than pursue the career of a professional artist she had “a million jobs” overseas, and across Australia and the Torres Strait, including working on a prawn trawler.It was a visit to the Dobell Drawing Prize in Sydney that prompted Currey-Billyard to consider more deeply how she wanted to spend her time. She noted that “I never really had anything interesting to say as an artist until I got older. And then suddenly you reach a…3 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Paved Paradise: The Paradox of Art VandalismIn 1974, Tony Shafrazi took a spray can and wrote “KILL ALL LIES” directly onto Picasso’s Guernica, 1937, hanging at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He claimed his rationale was an anti-war statement, so ergo, his method was to deface an anti-war painting. And not just any artwork, but the anti-war painting of the twentieth century. Calculated to create a sensation and possibly elevate his own status, he placidly stayed in the gallery while awaiting arrest. When the judge asked if he was likely to re-offend in the same manner, he replied, “No, because it has already been done.” The bright red spray paint didn’t soak into the heavily varnished canvas and was successfully removed, but the dye was cast. The graffiti text gauged over the painting’s…9 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Blak Douglas Not a Proper Aboriginal1970, the year Adam Hill was born, was a turbulent time of great change. It was time of the beginning of the Papunya Tula dotand circle-painting movement in Central Australia, and of a major acceptance of Aboriginal art into the Australian contemporary art world. It could be seen to have begun with the painting of a mural composition, in 1971, on the side of the Papunya School building to state the sacredness of the Honey Ant Dreaming story of the site. Parallel with this major evolution was a pan-Aboriginal revolution, with those of us of mixed descent reasserting our position within the history of the nation, both past and present.The most important performance theatre in Australia’s history happened in 1972, when a small number of Aboriginal activists set up a…11 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Nasim Nasr PUSH / PULLThe word “freedom” is at the centre of humanity – to be human is to be free, to relate to others, spaces, and places without restrictions or persecution. Iranian-born and Sydney-based artist Nasim Nasr explores the concept of freedom through her multi disciplinary practice. As a young child growing up in Iran, her artistic talent was noticed by a primary school teacher and then supported by her father, which led to Nasr’s enrolment at the University of Tehran.However, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the freedoms available to women were greatly reduced, and things like paintings or drawings of women and nudes were not permitted. With the support of her father, Nasr was encouraged to undermine these rules and to instead create more work that celebrated these prohibited images. It eventually…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62AARON FELL-FRACASSO KEEP THEM GUESSINGTo Aaron Fell-Fracasso, the primacy of mark-making is key. He’s constantly searching for new ways of making patterns, and any object can be enlisted to create the diverse and richly textured paintings for which he is known. He’ll manipulate implements from his workshop, break prongs off garden tools, and browse hardware stores specifically looking for construction tools to repurpose. His curious mind is constantly imagining the mark something could make, and then working through how he can fashion it into a painting.This playful approach is designed to keep a viewer interested, and he’s eager to throw them off the scent of how a work was made. As he states, “If I look at someone’s painting, I’m always trying to work out how they have created the mark, and when I’m…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62David BoothI’ve been hypnotised by drawings for as long as I can remember. My eyes are curious, always scanning the shapes of things, tracing repeat patterns and getting a bit lost in intersecting lines. There’s something about seeing the world this way that makes you want to draw everything. There must be some little receptors in my head that are addicted to the feeling of tracing line drawings with my eyes, or of breaking down real life into shapes and lines. Why does it feel so good to draw stuff?I’ve worked hard to try and keep deeply connected to how it feels to play, and to invent my own worlds through drawing for my own amusem*nt in a similar way to when I was young. It’s an obsession and a joy…4 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Ripple Effect Irene Barberis at Sol LeWitt’s StudioBarberis and LeWitt first met in 1974. They became friends, and he remained a supporter and mentor to her until his death in 2007. Although there are many synergies between their works, and Barberis was employed to work on a wall drawing of LeWitt’s in 1977, she was not LeWitt’s protégé as such. Rather, he encouraged her to follow her own instincts: “Sol’s greatest mentoring statement,” she tells me, “was to stick with your gut.” And this she did, whether she was rendering new visions of the apocalypse from the Book of Revelation in bioluminescent tapestry, drawing in rhythmic and repetitive gestures to create vibrant geometric abstractions, or engaging in scholarly practices.Over the past few years, with the blessing of LeWitt’s family, she has spent considerable time in his studio,…7 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62A PERFORMATIVE ENTANGLEMENT THE ART OF KELLIE O’DEMPSEY“Smashing the frame,” “moving past the border,” and “breaking out of our structures” are some of the expressions Kellie O’Dempsey uses to describe her need to represent or grasp at constant change.Growing up in pubs that her parents managed in regional Victoria meant living and working amongst a daily swirl of high-pressure adult, predominantly male, interaction. This “lived” culture continued into the pubs and clubs of Melbourne’s alternative music scene, where O’Dempsey pursued her passion for music and drawing. She used to draw bands live and began by carrying sketchbooks to gigs and drawing the artists while in the audience. Drawings made in the crucible of these venues were not preparatory ideas for other 2D works, but the key medium to enable her to explore the energy of the musicians…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62DONALD LAYco*ckThe major portion of my time is spent in contemplating what we are all doing here.– Donald Layco*ck, 1969The sociopolitical context Layco*ck was working in, from the post–World War II period onwards, witnessed Australia’s shifting alliance from England to the US. Layco*ck was one of the first Australian artists to take up the American influences of abstract expressionism, gaining a direct influence via the American artist Charles Reddington, who settled in Melbourne in 1959 and electrified the situation with his immediate encounters with the New York School. By the late 1950s, Layco*ck produced a home-brand form of local modernism. As Patrick McCaughey observed: “Donald Layco*ck was one of the first painters to accept the stylistic challenge of post-war American painting and put its great formal innovation to a personal use.”Born…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62BRIDGING THE GAP CENTRE 5Centre 5: bridging the gap is the first focussed survey of this disparate collective since the last member died in 2016. The exhibition’s location at McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery is entirely apt given its particular emphasis on sculpture, its ability to display such work in interior and varied exterior settings, and for its continuous support of the Centre 5 artists and their work since McClelland opened in 1971. Theirs was a brief existence, but the reverberations of Centre 5’s approach maintain significant resonances to this day; and contemporary sculptors, particularly those involved in public art, should revisit the group’s driving philosophy. The membership – Lenton Parr, Inge King, Norma Redpath, Vincas Jomantas, Teisutis Zikaras, and Clifford Last, inspired by Julius Kane – established a five-point plan which sought to bridge the…3 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62SYDNEYPHILES REIMAGINED WILLIAM YANGWilliam Yang’s life in 1970s Sydney had a lot of parties, and the State Library of NSW of course put on a party to celebrate the pre-show view of Sydneyphiles Reimagined, restaging the show that launched his career. William is good at friendship; the crowd included people from that astonishing era, and younger ones with an interest in history, photography… and life itself.Drinks in hand, we sat down to a slide show – an event itself of the seventies – and William showed us through the time. Of course it was nostalgic: people in the beauty of youth – elderly but still glamorous in the audience – mingled on screen with buildings, posters, newspaper articles, important figures, now lost. It is nearly fifty years since David McDiarmid, Peter Tully, Richard…3 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62TOMÁS SARACENO OCEANS OF AIROceans of Air does many things, but all of them revolve around a central imperative: slow down. Tomás Saraceno plunges you into darkness on entering the exhibition, and blinds you with a solitary beam of brilliant crystalline light, filled with dancing, flickering dust motes that emerge into sharp focus as one’s eyes adjust. This is Particular Matter(s), 2021, a sublimely simple work that is nothing more than light and the particles already present in the air. It’s a striking work that does a lot with little, demonstrating clearly what this exhibition needs from the viewer: some pause. Slow down.The darkness we adjust to as we move inward slowly becomes less of an obstacle, and that’s a good analogy in itself: in the era where a motto for neo-capitalism is “move…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62LAURENCE EDWARDS A GATHERING OF UNCERTAINTIESIn her 2019 book Time Song, Julia Blackburn explores Doggerland, the ancient stretch of land once linking East Anglia to main land Europe, now submerged deep under the North Sea. During the course of her investigation, she meets Dutch archaeologist Professor Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans, an expert in the transition from the Mesolithic to Neolithic periods in Northern Europe. He has a curious conception of his disciplinary methodology: “What one learns from all such studies is not expertise but a gathering of uncertainties and it is from these uncertainties that one must work.” To Louwe Kooijmans, knowledge production is not simply the outcome of the scientific method and its cold rationality. Embracing gaps and ambiguities is also crucial.When Suffolk-based bronze sculptor Laurence Edwards came across this phrase, it struck a…6 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62READING BETWEEN THE LINES MEL DOUGLASThe glass scene in Australia is rumbling, swelling. A jolt of new energy pulses through its crystalline veins as many contemporary artists are starting to think more about glass as an accessible, experimental material. Mel Douglas has been at the forefront of this glass scene for almost three decades. Working out of the Canberra Glassworks – a studio that has piloted innovations in Australian glassmaking – her practice explores the flexibility of glass as a material for drawing and mark-making, stretching the boundaries of what drawing is, and what it can be.Objects and lines are often considered two separate entities, but Douglas’s work uncovers the creative prospects of liminality – where the form is not merely a support for the drawing, but a three-dimensional drawing itself. “The transformative material of…9 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Claudia Kogachi GUT FEELINGWhen Claudia and I speak in early January, she has just returned to Aotearoa from a holiday to O‘ahu, where she spent time with her mother and obaachan (grandmother) after a prolonged gap between visits. She shares photographs of her aunt Shari’s manicured hands braiding crown flower leis; obaachan in pyjamas with her hair set in rollers, hovering in front of a television set; home-grown avocados, mandarins, and lemons; obaachan, again, washing her hair over a basin; elderly hands rolling musubi (spam sushi); and herself, post-surf. These photographs will contribute to a growing archive of imagery from which to develop compositions from her studio in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.Beyond connections to kin and her love of the ocean, Hawai‘i has formed an important part of Kogachi’s development as an artist. It…7 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Peter Tyndall Horseness is the Whatness of All HorseNear the beginning of Peter Tyndall’s dazzling Buxton Contemporary survey of over fifty years of creative work, there is a beautifully made model of a building. At first glance, it might appear like a stage set for a horror movie. The windows are open. Miniature light bulbs glow pink, blue, and amber on the inside. Its exterior is clad in a mix of white Styrofoam and yellowing newspaper cuttings from back in the day. “The day” in question was really an era that bonded a group of artists, who came of age during the Vietnam War, to each other and to their international counterparts working in New York, London, Rome, and Vienna. The headlines are more specific. “Fraser Will Block Russia in the Pacific;” “Can the World Survive the Bomb?;”…10 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Elyss McClearyMy upcoming show, at Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne, is a presentation of new paintings that explore the sensation of luminous colour with a focus on intimacy. Its title, A Tender Anchor, recalls how formal elements create different harmonies and relationships in paintings, just like we do in our own human interactions. Colour, marks, and forms anchor one another, each element affecting the next. For me, painting always connects me back to my human relationships and to my fascination with the energies in the world around me, reflecting back like a mirror. Madeline Simm wrote in 2022 of my paintings that “mirrored proportions face each other in an exchange.”Everyday experiences have always inspired my work. I observe colour, textures, lustres, and forms from the world around me and take these…3 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62On Moving Forward, Looking Back, and Side-Stepping What’s to ComeThe first biennale I ever attended was the 18th Biennale of Sydney (BoS) in 2012. I was fifteen at the time, and up until then had only been exposed to historical art of the Western canon. As I slowly wandered around co*ckatoo Island, I remember feeling so in awe that I felt this big tension in my chest. I never knew that contemporary art existed on this scale, that the works of artists still living could be embraced and platformed in such a way. It was an experience that I still remember as feeling sacred, almost spiritual. I remember carefully reading every inch of wall text possible, looking and listening with the intent of turning my body into a sponge to absorb every lick of expression or information offered. Visiting…7 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62AFTERGLOW DANELLE BERGSTROMInnately fuelled by emotional response, whether a portrait or landscape, Bergstrom’s work is always a fusion between an empathic approach to the environment and the artist’s own emotional turmoil. It should immediately be noted that there is no small talk with Bergstrom, who steps straight out with her heart on her sleeve.Painting with a technique she describes as “Danish pastry, where it’s layer upon layer,” the works can be built up and textural, or veil-like, with figurative layers shimmering through: “The processes is very unpredictable. I have no plans as such, and it develops and changes on its own. I need be prepared for all the possibilities that could arise. It’s like watching clouds form. You have to be aware. Decisions are made, but the actual paint has its own…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62LOVE ME LONG TIME DORCAS TANG 邓佳颖Dorcas Tang 邓佳颖 is an artist and researcher who asks many questions, and understands the transient nature of identity. She not only applies institutional critique to her practice, but draws from an inherent need to comprehend the complexities, binaries, and liminalities of her surroundings.She majored in Studio Arts and minored in Educational Studies and Spanish at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, US. This led Tang down a path of research and travel. Her first major project, Los Paisanos del Puerto, 2018–ongoing, is a series of audio interviews with the Chinese diaspora of Puntarenas, Costa Rica. She followed up with the photographic series Señorita China, 2019, where she documented the beauty pageants of the Chinese diaspora in San José, Costa Rica. These works began to define Tang’s practice and desire to ask…2 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62EVOKING GIPPSLAND KEVIN LINCOLNKevin Lincoln is the master of “slow art.” Whereas so much contemporary art is ephemeral, and packs a huge “wow” impact on first encounter that then rapidly evaporates, Lincoln’s art breathes of immortality – of a timelessness and permanence. His landscape paintings on display at the Gippsland Art Gallery do not scream out at you or demand your attention. They silently lie in wait, as if in ambush, and are ready to seduce you through their finely balanced tonal properties. Once you enter the painting you are there for the long haul, and discover endless subtle nuances that delight the eye and satisfy the intellect. Nothing in them seems out of place, with all of the elements beautifully ordered and lovingly resolved.In 1960, at the age of seventy, Giorgio Morandi,…5 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62DO HO SUHHome, is where I want to be But I guess I'm already there–Talking HeadsAs former Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (now the Chief Executive Officer of Bundanon Trust in Nowra), Rachel Kent, supported by Associate Curator Megan Robson, has realised a thought-provoking and ethereally aesthetic survey of the South Korean–born, London-based artist Do Ho Suh. Surprisingly, this is the first solo exhibition of his work in the Southern Hemisphere. Covering three decades of his work, it is one of the better installed survey shows I have seen at the MCA. It is an inspiring collection of installations, sculptures, drawings, and video that conjures the breaches that occur between the personal and collective spheres.Born in Seoul in 1962, Suh originally began as a painter. Both his…7 min
Artist Profile|Issue 62Curating Art NowWhat a curator is, and what a curator does, has been an evolving discussion over the past century, with the role and reach of curation developing in concert with the changing landscape of museums and how visitors interact with art. The last thirty years have seen a proliferation of biennials and art fairs, and explosions in the financial power of commercial galleries and auction houses. Curators have, in some ways, stepped out of the dusty back rooms of museums and into the spotlight – a spotlight of searing intensity and contradiction. This rise in the visibility of the curator in the 1990s parallels the import of DJs during this period, their brands becoming sometimes more foregrounded than the musicians they were playing. These über-curators, too, became – often reluctantly –…4 min
