ARTIST-CURATOR

An artist-curator is a practising artist who also curates shows or runs not-for-profit

spaces from which they exhibit their art and that of other artists

Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas

The Last Night of the Shop 3.7.93 1993
Tate
© Tracey Emin & Sarah Lucas

Inspired by the artist led initiatives in New York in the 1960s, these spaces
are often housed in temporary places – shops, warehouses, soon-to-be
demolished buildings – which can be inhabited for free or for a nominal rent
for a short period of time.
The artist-curator tends to remain outside the commercial art world, and
within a community of artists – often ones with whom they studied, or of a
similar generation – who are frustrated by the perceived impenetrability of
the art world.

For some artist-curators, it is the freedom to create art, control its output and
have a say in how it is exhibited that appeals, for others it is a means of
survival, a way of gaining exposure for the art that they and others do.
Damien Hirst
Controlled Substance Key Painting 1994
Tate / National Galleries of Scotland
© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2017. Photo:
Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

In the 1990s the art scene in London was re-energised by artist-run

exhibitions and galleries. Taking advantage of the cheap empty shops,
offices and warehouses which the collapse of the stocks and property
market in 1987 had made readily available, young artists were able to create
exhibiting opportunities for themselves outside the established gallery
system.

Perhaps the best known of these initiatives was Freeze an exhibition

organised by a group of young artists led by art student Damien Hirst in an
empty London Port Authority building in London’s Docklands. Freeze was a
phenomenal succes and was the springboard for the careers of many of the
artists known as the YBAs (Young British Artists). Other significant artist-run
initiatives established in London around that time include galleries City
Racing and Matt’s Gallery.