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Keyword

Curare, or toward a studio ethos

Start Date
28 July 2024
End Date
04 September 2024
Venue
Madsen Sylvester Studio
Location
Ramsgate, Kent
Curator
Cyana Madsen
An installation inside a window front. (Centre) A pair of blue nitrile gloves is laid neatly on a white cloth beside a golden accessory, possibly a brooch or decorative trim. To the right, an open archival storage box lined with tissue paper is ready for use.
A pair of blue nitrile gloves is laid neatly on a white cloth beside a golden accessory.
A pair of blue nitrile gloves on a white cloth. To the right, an open archival storage box lined with tissue paper is ready for use.

Exhibition 2: Curare, or toward a studio ethos

Curator: Cyana Madsen

Date: 28th July 2024 – 4th September 2024

Madsen Sylvester Studio is a space for exhibiting any aspects of the wide remit of the dressed body and fashion, and for interrogating curatorial methods. In establishing the studio and its focus, I decided that while the studio will host curators and support their exhibitions, it will keep no physical collection. This decision has two motivations: dictated by the considerations and capacity of the space, and ideologically motivated by a need to unsettle and question the hierarchies imposed by collecting methodologies.

As a site of experimental praxis, the studio ethos must be explicit in its intention to provide a creative working space to fashion curators. Yet, I acknowledge that this ethos is generated from my own research and experience, and is therefore open to questioning from external practitioners, to ensure its ongoing relevance and utility.

The initial mandate for Madsen Sylvester Studio is that:

· the exhibitions on display at the studio will temporarily highlight a research or personal preoccupation of the specific fashion curator working with the space;

· all visiting curators will be asked to provide a biography which contextualises the exhibition in relation to their practice;

· while at the studio, any objects will be cared for and presented to a standard agreed in dialogue with the visiting curator, the commissioning curator, and any relevant stakeholders;

· the studio will not operate as a permanent site for storing fashion histories.

Curare, or toward a studio ethos thinks about what it means to be a curator without a collection. Is it the location, the objects, or the act that makes us? When not in functional use, the curatorial tools on display: the archive box, acid-free tissue, measuring tape, pencil, nitrile gloves become disembodied objects of dress themselves. Without a collection to document and store, they are both remnants of the performance of collections care, and the materialised symbols of the curator’s implicit promise to care for objects.

Images Courtesy of Madsen Sylvester Studio.