To coincide with These Days, the current group exhibition presented both physically and digitally with COMA, curator Sebastian Goldspink has spoken with gallery director Sotiris Sotiriou and gallery assistant Chengyang Yu regarding his motivations when curating the show. The conversation covers Goldspink’s investigations into problem-solving while painting, time and it’s relation to memory in art-making, and other sources of inspiration.
SS & CY: In These Days what is it that interests you about the transition and intersection of acting as an image maker, in the creation of the Video8 footage included in the presentation, to a curator of other people’s images?
SG: I think initially the decision to include an element in the exhibition which featured Video 8 footage was an aesthetic one. I like the look of this type of footage. The show is called ’These Days’ but is very nostalgic. The footage is from the first day of me trying to work out how to use my parents video camera in 1990. It is clumsy but also has an innocence and vibrance. It was also about something that many painters have told me that essentially no one ‘wins’ painting. It is a battle that repeats everyday. This was me I guess standing in solidarity with the painters in the show. Showing struggle in the pursuit of beauty.
SS & CY: In your text you speak about “… Footage that was only unified by the fact that it purely represented my eye.” Can you speak further about this, and about how differing individual tastes become unified in the exhibition?
SG: When I approach a group show I always start with the artists but interestingly I never assemble a group of artists based on their visual similarity. I look at something broader that’s harder to define. I look at tonal qualities and mix them together. This approach embraces difference and looks at the mix as a whole.
