Curatorial Rational
Format
- Word Doc or PDF
- Must be 1 MB for upload
The Curatorial Rational can't exceed a max of 700 words and it should cover the questions below.
Below is a suggested format for the Curatorial Rational...this is just a suggestion not a mandatory format:
First Paragraph
Begin with an overview paragraph that makes a clear and concise statement about your work. Support that statement, telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. This paragraph should be broad in scope. Specifics will come next.
Second Paragraph
Point out themes in your work or discuss experiences that have influenced your work. Discuss research and influential artists that you reference in your artwork. How do you make decisions in the course of your work? Why you use the materials/techniques and tools that you do. Go into detail (offer a specific example).
Third Paragraph
Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How it grew out of prior work or life experiences. What are you exploring, attempting, challenging by doing this work. Justify your selection, arrangement and the exhibition of artworks “within a designated space” (curatorial methodologies). Reflect on how your exhibition conveys an understanding of the relationship between the artworks and the viewer. Finally, sum up the most important points made throughout previous paragraphs.
- What is the vision for presenting this body of work?
- How have particular issues, motifs or ideas been explored, or particular materials or techniques used?
- What themes can be identified in the work, or what experiences have influenced it?
- How does the way you have exhibited your artwork contribute to the meanings you are trying to convey to an audience?
- What strategies did you use to develop a relationship between the artwork and the viewer, for example, visual impact?
- How does the way you have arranged and presented your artworks support the relationship and connection between the artworks presented?
- What do you intend your audience to feel, think, experience, understand, see, learn, consider from the work you have selected for exhibition?
Below is a suggested format for the Curatorial Rational...this is just a suggestion not a mandatory format:
First Paragraph
Begin with an overview paragraph that makes a clear and concise statement about your work. Support that statement, telling the reader more about your goals and aspirations. This paragraph should be broad in scope. Specifics will come next.
Second Paragraph
Point out themes in your work or discuss experiences that have influenced your work. Discuss research and influential artists that you reference in your artwork. How do you make decisions in the course of your work? Why you use the materials/techniques and tools that you do. Go into detail (offer a specific example).
Third Paragraph
Tell the reader a little more about your current work. How it grew out of prior work or life experiences. What are you exploring, attempting, challenging by doing this work. Justify your selection, arrangement and the exhibition of artworks “within a designated space” (curatorial methodologies). Reflect on how your exhibition conveys an understanding of the relationship between the artworks and the viewer. Finally, sum up the most important points made throughout previous paragraphs.
Example #1
This example is from IB. It is an HL example and is considered exemplary by IB.
My body of work has moved through several different ideas, but they all relate to the theme of the corruption of childhood. I have tried to explore this theme in several different ways – by looking at bullying, in work inspired by the children’s home in Nepal, by looking at some of the impact technology is having on the children of today and finally, by exploring my own childhood, and how part of the nature of this period of late childhood is that you are aware that your time left as a child is short. My works have incorporated sculptural and textural elements and I’ve used a number of processes to adapt the medium to my purpose, such as deliberate destruction of parts of my painting surface and the incorporation of leaves and soil into my paint. I began IB Art as a photographer, and this has been the basis for the majority of my work. I use photographic references and usually have a photo shoot before starting a piece so I have the image to base the painting on.
My three pieces that focus around bullying, Feral 1, Feral 2 and Feral 3, were inspired by the work of Egon Schiele. The theme he tended to explore was sexuality, but I chose to use his style to explore something more personally relevant to me, and look at bullying. I wanted to depict the bullies as people who were both vulnerable and threatening, because I think bullies are often trying to hide the fact that they’re afraid or have been hurt.
I developed these pieces with the viewer firmly in mind. I wanted the meaning to come from observation, rather than from personal relevance, and so the first thing I considered was how to effectively communicate my meaning to the viewer. I kept the backgrounds plain to ensure that the figures stood out and I used warm earth tones for the backgrounds to make it feel inviting to look at, while the people are shaded with cool blues to remove harmony with the background. I designed the people to look like they were reacting to a threat, and so I placed them on the canvas in a way that the threat appeared to be standing in front of the canvas – their bodies are angled with backs and elbows pointed at the viewer and they are staring at that point.
The next group of pieces were inspired by time I spent in Nepal for my school’s project week. We spent time working with the children in a home for orphans and children displaced by other unfortunate circumstances. I was struck by how universal some aspects of humanity are: we had come from a privileged background and these children came from broken homes, we were easily able to make friends and have fun with them. I wanted the work I did based on my time there to portray them as just people, not as people you ought to pity or feel sorry for.
In these works, I wanted to make the viewer feel like they weren’t a part of the experience, the opposite of my intentions for the Feral pieces. The people are not looking directly at the viewer; they are looking at each other. I’ve used blue and grey tones to make the images look less inviting and to make the people n them appear to be more self‐possessed.
My pieces related to my own childhood – Matsubokkuri Koen, Juvenescence and Collision – have incorporated textural elements to make the viewing experience more interesting. I brought leaves, pine cones and soil back from the forest depicted and used them in Matsubokkuri Koen and Juvenescence.
Collision is a more abstract, impressionist style. It looks better from a distance, when the shapes start to look like something, rather than close‐up where the individual details don’t make sense. I’ve positioned it on its own along the western wall of the exhibition, so that the viewer can stand at a distance and focus only on this painting.
This example is from IB. It is an HL example and is considered exemplary by IB.
My body of work has moved through several different ideas, but they all relate to the theme of the corruption of childhood. I have tried to explore this theme in several different ways – by looking at bullying, in work inspired by the children’s home in Nepal, by looking at some of the impact technology is having on the children of today and finally, by exploring my own childhood, and how part of the nature of this period of late childhood is that you are aware that your time left as a child is short. My works have incorporated sculptural and textural elements and I’ve used a number of processes to adapt the medium to my purpose, such as deliberate destruction of parts of my painting surface and the incorporation of leaves and soil into my paint. I began IB Art as a photographer, and this has been the basis for the majority of my work. I use photographic references and usually have a photo shoot before starting a piece so I have the image to base the painting on.
My three pieces that focus around bullying, Feral 1, Feral 2 and Feral 3, were inspired by the work of Egon Schiele. The theme he tended to explore was sexuality, but I chose to use his style to explore something more personally relevant to me, and look at bullying. I wanted to depict the bullies as people who were both vulnerable and threatening, because I think bullies are often trying to hide the fact that they’re afraid or have been hurt.
I developed these pieces with the viewer firmly in mind. I wanted the meaning to come from observation, rather than from personal relevance, and so the first thing I considered was how to effectively communicate my meaning to the viewer. I kept the backgrounds plain to ensure that the figures stood out and I used warm earth tones for the backgrounds to make it feel inviting to look at, while the people are shaded with cool blues to remove harmony with the background. I designed the people to look like they were reacting to a threat, and so I placed them on the canvas in a way that the threat appeared to be standing in front of the canvas – their bodies are angled with backs and elbows pointed at the viewer and they are staring at that point.
The next group of pieces were inspired by time I spent in Nepal for my school’s project week. We spent time working with the children in a home for orphans and children displaced by other unfortunate circumstances. I was struck by how universal some aspects of humanity are: we had come from a privileged background and these children came from broken homes, we were easily able to make friends and have fun with them. I wanted the work I did based on my time there to portray them as just people, not as people you ought to pity or feel sorry for.
In these works, I wanted to make the viewer feel like they weren’t a part of the experience, the opposite of my intentions for the Feral pieces. The people are not looking directly at the viewer; they are looking at each other. I’ve used blue and grey tones to make the images look less inviting and to make the people n them appear to be more self‐possessed.
My pieces related to my own childhood – Matsubokkuri Koen, Juvenescence and Collision – have incorporated textural elements to make the viewing experience more interesting. I brought leaves, pine cones and soil back from the forest depicted and used them in Matsubokkuri Koen and Juvenescence.
Collision is a more abstract, impressionist style. It looks better from a distance, when the shapes start to look like something, rather than close‐up where the individual details don’t make sense. I’ve positioned it on its own along the western wall of the exhibition, so that the viewer can stand at a distance and focus only on this painting.
Example #2 Reagan Student
The theme of my entire body of work mostly focuses on identity in one's individual life, not as a collective whole and without a cultural focus. Being able to relate my theme to my life and being stuck within a transitional phase has assisted me in keeping my work within this fluid idea; as well as continuously changing and impressing me in different ways. Concepts I’ve attempted to explore within my work are topics that are sensitive to touch on, such as eating disorders and mental disorders. Utilizing materials such as oil paints and Photoshop to create digital pieces has been a massive wealth of therapy for me, and I believe all my works are linked between the ideas of reflections over bad experiences. Previous experiences in my life have truly made me able to improve my art not simply on an aesthetic quality but more as an attempt to convey certain feeling. Applying these experiences to a theme of identity to tie pieces together creates a body of work that is not only connected aesthetically by my artist’s voice but thematically in conveying similar themes.
My personal favorite medium, digital painting, is a medium I use quite often not just in my academic and professional art life but in my personal life as well. I believe that due to the fact in it being my favorite medium, I’m able to get a general idea across to a viewer or audience better than sticking with something I dislike. My favorite pieces, coincidentally, are digital paintings. However, a very important element called texture is left out of the picture when using a computer to edit and draw pieces. The difference between my oil paintings and my digital ones is the texture; the brushstrokes, the slight extension from the canvas versus the smooth glossy finish of a print and the pristine accuracy of every stroke. When I’m painting traditionally, I don’t paint to get to an end point and simply paint not only to paint but until the piece feels like it had come to a close. This is a concept that I want to be able to not only carry across to my work in other mediums (including but not limited to sculpture and 2d illustration) but I want an audience to realize the difference between the efforts of an oil painting and the efforts of a digital painting. This is not to say that digital is any easier, in fact the digital pieces tie my exhibition together, but different subjects within identity can be better explored using certain mediums.
The space I was allotted for my exhibition included two white walls and a podium for physical 3-D objects. My organization within that space began as a caustic version of expression; with the heavy subject matter that I prefer to work within, my expression and organization had been displayed as such.
The way I decided to organize my exhibition was a direct nod at the themes presented. I displayed my works in a way that introduce a harsh reality, almost like a slap in the face, with my chronological first upperclassman work, Fierce. The near nudity and vulnerability of the piece bring about the central themes present within all my works, and as a digital collage, the quality of work is quite high. In between this piece are small, not filler, but physically smaller pieces such as my illustrative prints encompassing motifs of growth and vulnerability. Closing off the exhibition I have my most recent piece, Safe, which allows the exhibition to come full circle by wrapping back around to vulnerability and an obvious fear.
The means through which I create art and the illustrative expressionist voice that has always been a part of my work has been expressed thoroughly in the pieces that I’ve chosen for my exhibition. While the mediums that I work with are not especially varied, I don’t feel constrained by them nor feel as though it puts restrictions on my work. The themes and motifs being mostly similar across the board is not intentional, due to art being the biggest therapeutic activity in my life these themes are present in my expression.
The theme of my entire body of work mostly focuses on identity in one's individual life, not as a collective whole and without a cultural focus. Being able to relate my theme to my life and being stuck within a transitional phase has assisted me in keeping my work within this fluid idea; as well as continuously changing and impressing me in different ways. Concepts I’ve attempted to explore within my work are topics that are sensitive to touch on, such as eating disorders and mental disorders. Utilizing materials such as oil paints and Photoshop to create digital pieces has been a massive wealth of therapy for me, and I believe all my works are linked between the ideas of reflections over bad experiences. Previous experiences in my life have truly made me able to improve my art not simply on an aesthetic quality but more as an attempt to convey certain feeling. Applying these experiences to a theme of identity to tie pieces together creates a body of work that is not only connected aesthetically by my artist’s voice but thematically in conveying similar themes.
My personal favorite medium, digital painting, is a medium I use quite often not just in my academic and professional art life but in my personal life as well. I believe that due to the fact in it being my favorite medium, I’m able to get a general idea across to a viewer or audience better than sticking with something I dislike. My favorite pieces, coincidentally, are digital paintings. However, a very important element called texture is left out of the picture when using a computer to edit and draw pieces. The difference between my oil paintings and my digital ones is the texture; the brushstrokes, the slight extension from the canvas versus the smooth glossy finish of a print and the pristine accuracy of every stroke. When I’m painting traditionally, I don’t paint to get to an end point and simply paint not only to paint but until the piece feels like it had come to a close. This is a concept that I want to be able to not only carry across to my work in other mediums (including but not limited to sculpture and 2d illustration) but I want an audience to realize the difference between the efforts of an oil painting and the efforts of a digital painting. This is not to say that digital is any easier, in fact the digital pieces tie my exhibition together, but different subjects within identity can be better explored using certain mediums.
The space I was allotted for my exhibition included two white walls and a podium for physical 3-D objects. My organization within that space began as a caustic version of expression; with the heavy subject matter that I prefer to work within, my expression and organization had been displayed as such.
The way I decided to organize my exhibition was a direct nod at the themes presented. I displayed my works in a way that introduce a harsh reality, almost like a slap in the face, with my chronological first upperclassman work, Fierce. The near nudity and vulnerability of the piece bring about the central themes present within all my works, and as a digital collage, the quality of work is quite high. In between this piece are small, not filler, but physically smaller pieces such as my illustrative prints encompassing motifs of growth and vulnerability. Closing off the exhibition I have my most recent piece, Safe, which allows the exhibition to come full circle by wrapping back around to vulnerability and an obvious fear.
The means through which I create art and the illustrative expressionist voice that has always been a part of my work has been expressed thoroughly in the pieces that I’ve chosen for my exhibition. While the mediums that I work with are not especially varied, I don’t feel constrained by them nor feel as though it puts restrictions on my work. The themes and motifs being mostly similar across the board is not intentional, due to art being the biggest therapeutic activity in my life these themes are present in my expression.