11. Negotiating the Australian Exhibition

The successful exhibition opening was followed by a series of public lectures involving specific artists and curators that were well attended, particularly by tertiary students.  There was a smattering of press over the weekend including favourable reviews and positive commentary, particularly around the curatorial objectives of the exhibition which seemed to be broadly recognised and understood.

From a curatorial perspective, thought and attention now began to turn to the exhibition’s Australian iteration.  The exhibition was to have a 3 month run in Seoul before being packed and freighted to Melbourne where the exhibition was scheduled to open at Gertrude Contemporary in late 2012.  It had not been possible to fully consider the shape and form of the Gertrude exhibition until this point.  This was largely because we needed to see the works in situ in Korea to get a sense of the scale and scope and to then consider what could be transposed, reinterpreted or perhaps even omitted altogether.  It was not simply going to be a matter of re-hanging the works as shown in Korea.  For a start the exhibition space at Gertrude is significantly (perhaps 75%) smaller than in Korea.

As we began to explore this issue with our Korean colleagues it became apparent that we each had a very different impression of what the Australian exhibition would look like.  Tensions began to rise.  The senior Korean curator was adamant that all the current artists should be included in the Australia. To take this one step further it was expected that Gertrude would also fund travel for one or two of the international artists to come to Melbourne to install the work.  There were differing opinions on what had been previously discussed and agreed and it became extremely uncomfortable.  We were scheduled to board a flight home in 24 hours and we needed to find some amicable resolution.  In the end, we capitulated and agreed that we would find a way to include all of the artists, even if that meant using off-site exhibition sites to accommodate them all.