curators' journal
Light a Match
The project was built in 1997 for a group exhibition celebrating the labour movement and community activism. The project was conceived as as a web-based artwork that would address aspects of the labour of art production. The address book is/was a symbol of social networking via mail and telephone. The curator, the selector and protector of artists, is a hub of the art community. The perceived power of the curator often blinds artists to administrative, bureaucratic and public relations nightmare faced daily by these women.
The work was also designed to be visual as it was made to sit in a gallery among painting, prints and sculpture. Each portrait was created in ascii or text and sliced into many images to create animated gifs required for the low bandwidth and slow machines available at the time. The animations cycled through evenually leaving a still portrait of the curator on the monitor.
The project attempted to address an investigation in new technology while creating a work that would engage viewers in the gallery space in the context of the exhibition.
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