CULT OF THE CURATOR

THE CURATORIAL TACTICS ON DISPLAY AT THE Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s 2016 survey exhibition Painting, More Painting managed to draw a general focus, ironically, more on curating than painting.

There were a number of reasons for this and none of them boded well for those who specialise in contemporary curatorial practice. The very structure of the show suggested that painting per se was decidedly secondary to the imposed curatorial design and structure.

This simple fact, as obvious as it was, was made more overt by the denial implicit in the statement made by co-curator Annika Kristensen when she told ArtsHub that “we didn’t want to have any more curatorial control than the selection process”.