Artworks and Exchanges: the problem of representing socially-engaged artworks

BACKGROUND This exhibition explored the limits of re-presenting forms of socially-engaged art. Exploring the 'social turn' (Bishop 2006) and dialogic art (Kester 2013) these community-based and political forms typically resist institutional presentation and categorisation by recalibrating the traditional 'rules' of formal gallery audience spectatorship. Presented at Spectres of Evaluation: rethinking art, value, community international conference, this exhibition positioned art making as a primary form of knowledge creation for an international audience. CONTRIBUTION My role was as curator supported by a curatorial committee: PhD student Rob Ball; Richard Ennis Incinerator Gallery; Jade Lillie Footscray Community Arts Centre; Alison Lasek, ACCA; and Simone Slee University of Melbourne. Spanning the two exhibition sites connected by the Maribyrnong River, Footscray Community Arts Centre and Incinerator Gallery, Artworks and Exchanges took as its starting point the examination of arts engagement in both form and content. Exploring ideas of intervention and participation in community-based arts, a range of forms were presented in the exhibition including live art, site specific performance as well as the display of material artworks as 'archive' or residue in the galleries. SIGNIFICANCE The significance of the exhibition was not only the scale (2 sites, 14 works), scope (visual arts, video, and live) and merit of artists, but that is contributes to a new methodological approach to knowledge creation. As an extension to the ARC Linkage Grant: Towards an integrated approach to evaluating community based arts, the exhibition explored curating as a dialogic research method asking questions of art/ community/ value. The exhibition was funded by Australia Council and VicHealth. 300 artists, academics, and policy makers attended the 3 day conference and it is estimated by gallery staff 1200 viewers visited the exhibition over the 3 weeks.