Mixed media and Installation artist
Re-Orient Curatorial Project
New Approaches to Exhibition Navigation
Created as exhibition texts to the 2024 group exhibition, Novel Landscapes, Re-Orient examines the ways in which we explore and interpret our environments as a personal rather than collective response.
The Novel Landscapes exhibition featured three artists - Giuseppe D'Innella, Jayson Lilley and Anna Masters. Each artist expressed different interests and narratives about the landscape through their works, extending from physicality to social structures.
Through the Re-Orient project, Anna considered the environment of the exhibition as its own unique landscape. Through written texts, she identified themes and interests as they related to each of the artists, and 'read' the exhibition through these unique lenses. Re-Orient was presented as a map and guide of the exhibition as told through three different voices. The result was an exhibition guide that allowed three different entry points to the exhibition. Visitors could explore the exhibition with the guide that interested them the most, or with all three guides for a varied experience of the exhibition landscape.
Through this curatorial device, Anna questioned the assumptions we make about the neutrality of space and the universality of experience. She asks us to consider the narratives we absorb and the ways we might look at our landscape with fresh perspectives.
You can read each of the navigational texts below.
Physical Landscapes : Giuseppe D'Innella
"The land embraces us with each of the senses, pulling us into the gentle specifics of the place. Whether it’s the undulating sunny hills of Tuscany, or the sharp chill of a British wind on the skin, there’s not a part of the body that isn’t touched by the particulars of place. It’s the familiarity with the quality of the light, the smell of the earth, the sway of the flowers that allow us to identify places as home or as foreign, as safe or as threat. We respond emotionally to the physicality of the place, so every landscape that we encounter is an encounter of the body, the mind and the heart. "
View the guide below.
Lived Landscapes : Jayson Lilley
"Landscapes shape the way we move through the world. And we, in turn, shape the world to move more easily through the landscape. It’s the shapes that we have carved into the landscape that tells a story of how we live. Written into our built environments are stories of love and rivalry, prosperity and loss, and of the long and varied journeys that we make as individuals, as communities, and as nations. There are power-dynamics, insecurities, manipulations and motivations that go unseen and unspoken even as the landscapes shift around us. The story of the landscape is a human story; it’s one of everyday experiences that imbed into each of us a unique perspective from which to view the horizon."
View the guide below.
Temporal Landscapes : Anna Masters
"The land is full of stories. From the huge monuments that forge grand narratives in our built environments, to the leaf that falls to nourish the next generation of plants, each moment of our lives leaves a trace on the physical environment around us. The routes we take mark and compress the ground below us – sometimes dramatically and often imperceptibly, but always the landscape is being shaped. The environments around us – whether built or natural – are evolving archives of the lives we live and the many lives that have come before us. The landscape is not just a series of physical spaces, it is a series of moments that shift our horizons continuously."
View the guide below.
