Online & various London locations
May 1–17, 2021
The Royal College of Art announces five MA Curating Contemporary Art graduate projects across a range of platforms, mediums and spaces in collaboration with partners the British Library, Camden Art Centre, Furtherfield, and Gasworks. The projects will take place online and around London between May 1–17.
This year’s MA Curating Contemporary Art (CCA) graduate projects once again highlight the extraordinary resilience and creative capacity of the visual arts community and cultural sector that our students became part of during the last eight months as they worked with our 2021 partners.
Curating under COVID-19 continues to pose challenges to established modes of curatorial practice. Hybrid modes of working are fully explored in this year’s projects as opportunities to experiment across platforms, spaces and audiences emerge.
Learning to work together across 14 different cities and seven countries, this year’s students have commissioned over 20 artists and contributors to produce projects that fully embrace today’s global context of creative and curatorial collaboration.
Highly alert to the cultural and political conditions in which art is made, accessed, and debated, this year’s projects particularly consider ways to engage audiences beyond the UK, to include students’ own geographical settings. Enthusiasm, trust, and confidence are essential to curating during a pandemic, and this year’s projects are a testament to all of our CCA partners, artists, and contributors.
The projects are:
May 1–7
Furtherfield: We are just animals, humans, and machines getting on together in specific lifeworlds
We are just animals, humans, and machines getting on together in specific lifeworlds is a site-specific, digital listening experience connecting the human and non-human inhabitants of Finsbury Park in London.
May 4–10
Gasworks: Fulfilment Services Ltd.
Fulfilment Services Ltd. explores the implications of techno-capitalism for the widespread supply and demand networks that fulfill consumer needs and desires. Newly commissioned artworks unfold across different spaces of distribution including billboards, delivery vehicles, and a digital platform.
May 7–13
Camden Art Centre: In the meantime…
In the meantime… is an online public programme of commissions by Camden-based artists, whose works act as a companion for our audience to explore the stories, both past and present, between Somers Town in northwest London and neighbouring Camden Art Centre.
April 8–14
British Library partnership: Notes on Play
For Notes on Play, multidisciplinary artist Shenece Oretha has been commissioned to make a new work in response to the “Playtimes” collection within the British Library’s sound archive. The commission explores the creative capacities of active listening, the politics of play and the archival.
May 11–17
Gasworks: Hear the Light
Hear the Light is a synchronisation of aural and visual experiences, a meditation on connectivity that brings together new work by four artists.
Supporters for the RCA’s MA Curating Contemporary Art Shows 2021
Arts Council England, JACK ARTS, Haringey Council, Here For Culture, London Arts Board, The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Print&Digital, and Unlocking Our Sound Heritage.
Study Curating Contemporary Art at the RCA
Interested in joining the next cohort of curators shaping the arts sector? Find out more about our MA Curating Contemporary Art and Curating Contemporary Art and Design short course.
