An Arbitrary Exhibition

TOAST, 16 January – 25 January 2015
Matthew Bamber, Phoebe Eustance, Simon Patterson, Sarah Sanders, Peter Sweetman

An Arbitrary Exhibition is curated according to a set of pre-determined rules that encourage arbitrary decision-making. The most important of these rules is that the included artists make their own decisions on what to exhibit, with no influence from the curator. Once the exhibition is open, the curator will look for unintentional relationships between the artworks, retro-actively giving a theme to the exhibition. Exhibitions are often presented as effortless and perfect (particularly any that take place in a ‘white cube’), while behind the scenes, curators deal with changes in circumstance, e.g. an increase or decrease in budget, or not being able to secure the involvement of their first-choice artists. This leads to arbitrary decisions being made, a process which seems to contradict the end-product. An Arbitrary Exhibition exaggerates this process, in an attempt to examine the nature of curating.

Read the exhibition guide here.

Read the Rules for an Arbitrary Exhibition here.

Read the press release here.

Press:
Postcard from Manchester, frieze.