Virtual study event: Susan Bright | Collaboration & Creative Practice
2 June 2020
Open College of the Arts, Photography & Moving Image, International Guest Lecture:
Susan Bright | Collaboration and Creative Practice, Followed by in conversation with Arpita Shah and Dan Robinson.
I watched the on-line lecture by Susan Bright and attended the conversation session
From the OCA description of the session:
Susan Bright is a curator and writer based in Paris. She has curated exhibitions internationally at institutions including: Tate Britain, The National Portrait Gallery in London and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Photographers’ Gallery and the Foundling Museum Chicago amongst others.
This lecture asserts that photographic practice is inherently collaborative…Drawing on recent projects where she has developed relationships and friendships with artists, writers and editors, Bright considers what curating can be and its possibilities when working with others. Examples including Elina Brotherus’ solo exhibition Playground and her Guest Curation of PHotoESPAÑA 2019. Both projects highlight the in-flux nature of her work and the various roles a curator and her collaborators play.
From this lecture I think I gained a better understanding of the role of the curator – both in an institution and, like Bright, as a freelance curator.
A second aspect of this was the interplay between curator and artist – which in the course of the conversation after her lecture, she described as analogous to that between and writer and editor. ie a collaboration to produce the finished works.
Andrew Procter 