The Curatorship of the Front Door, Back Gate Project - Essay Example

“Front Door, Back Gate” took "domesticity" as its theme, complimenting an ongoing Jeannie Finally exhibit at the Hatton Gallery, a challenging yearly endeavor by students from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The exhibit reflects the spaces and limitations of domestic life as well as domesticity as a theme for art. The group chose interior as “Front Door” and exterior as “Back Gate”; which showcases Hatton’s historical collection along with other works on loan.

We used complementary home and garden furniture to create a welcoming home-like atmosphere.Traditional gallery displays are very different from the way we display art in our homes. Domesticating the gallery provides a refreshing experience for visitors and shows domestic art and artworks on that theme in a new context. The vivid “Red Table” by Patrick Heron reflects love and solitude as well as suggesting lifestyle and joie de vivre. Heron has an affinity for vivid, exotic, and captivating reds in this abstract still life.

The interior space shows a table set for one, giving a sense of solitude, but also loneliness.It echoes survival in that, even when alone, we still set the table. Domestic traditions have survival value too. The composition is inspired by forms and patterns extracted from domestic surroundings, activating the space around the objects, enlarging upon the subject to encompass the whole of domestic reality, or bringing the whole world in and simplifying existence down to a table set for one. Simplicity adds innocence and invites the mind to invent the story.

It is provocative in the use of color and contrast, yet mysterious as shapes are obscured while details jump out like questions.Leon Maurice’s “Net” photograph shows a sense of belonging. Likewise, the “Net” curtain photograph reflects a sense of place with a hint of voyeurism: a glimpse through a net curtain looking out onto a blurred view.