Introducing SITE, Curator Cairo Clarke’s Experimental New Art Publication
By Something CuratedSITE is an annual curatorial experiment and printed publication initiated by London-based curator Cairo Clarke. The project will launch during a public event, including curator talks and readings from artists, at Mimosa House on 4 September 2019. Exploring alternative modes of exhibition and dissemination of artist practice, it is a product of precarity, lack of space, accessibility, visibility, and funding. Light, yet considered, SITE uses print as a format to set up alternative encounters with artists, research and exhibition that are incomplete and not geographically dependent.
Curator Clarke dedicates her practice to nurturing relationships with artists, facilitating opportunities outside of institutions and galleries, with a keen focus on disseminating artist practice in dynamic, context-sensitive experiences that negotiate relationships between artist, audience, personal and public narratives. SITE’s first edition (of 100) includes artists Clarke has built relationships with over the past 3 years, each in different capacities.
For most, the artists in this edition have extremely dynamic practices, many working in performance and crossing over mediums in response to their individual, ever-evolving artistic languages. Built on trust, SITE becomes a space to share moments where these languages collide. Among the contributing artists are, Chase Hall, Clayton Vomero, Dasha Selyanova, Dimakatso Mathopa, Erica Eyres, Gray Wielebinski, Hannah Perry, Harriet Middleton-Baker, Legacy Russell, Lotte Andersen, Malaxa, Nina Wakeford, Phoebe Collings-James, Sade Mica, SAGG NAPOLI, Suzannah Pettigrew, Tamar Clarke Brown, Wilson Oryema and Zenande Mketeni.
Clarke explains: “SITE aims to disrupt dominant circuits of representational economy and the homogenisation of cultural spaces by offering space to share iterations of artists’ practice in whatever capacity they see fit. By defying a particular functional or commercial purpose, the content of the project is not definite, and instead has agency to catalyse and circulate exchange of ideas and language – visual, written, performed – that constitute as components of a body of work, coming together to form an expanded site of art and archive.”
The physical parameters of the project create a transparent framework for both curator and artist to negotiate, examine and respond to, rendering visible the role of and relationships between curator and artist(s). SITE will be a stall holder at the London Art Book Fair at Whitechapel Gallery 5-8 September 2019, and at Bound Art Book Fair at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester 19-20 October.
Images courtesy Cairo Clarke