Out of the Matrix: Decoding curation through print practice

This paper will track and critique the various processes of curation employed to present three iterations of the print exhibitions from the Out of the Matrix project. We will examine the ‘how’ of exhibition planning, making and presenting to ask questions of social, political and cultural identity using concepts of intersectionality with notions of encounter. With print-works ranging from traditional to unconventional these exhibitions have privileged the reproductive matrix as their primary premise. By evoking printmaking’s ‘mother’ matrix through reproducibility the Out of the Matrix project exhibitions reflect-back into printmaking’s multiple pasts to extend and thus project out to imagined futures. Beginning in Melbourne Australia in 2016, the exhibition Out of the Matrix showcased a group of artists who activated an expanded understanding of current print practice. In 2018 the second iteration was presented in Santander Spain, co-curated by Richard Harding, Wilson Yeung Chun Wai and Estefania Salas, this iteration explored how the process of curation could cross cultural differences yet be positioned in sameness through the commonality of print praxis. Through the Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP) iteration we will discuss the presentation of print-based works that can be reconfigured and pre-presented in various geopolitical or geo-social spaces. The Out of the Matrix project has highlighted how the matrix is a trans-disciplinary device that activates a cross section of outcomes. This paper will discuss the notion of the matrix through the practice of making and installing artwork and how the viewer encounters the artworks within a given space: architectural, material and virtual.