This research project has evolved from my need to understand more about the role of the curator within an exhibition, and how the curator can work in a similar manner of an artist as some kind of curator-artist hybrid, using the exhibition as their creative tool. I’m interested in looking at how curators can push their own ideas and interests through the exhibition, essentially using it to communicate in the same way as an individual artwork would, thus making the exhibition the medium of the curators artwork, instead of using the exhibition as a tool to display.

The collaborative nature of the research project and the idea of developing and generating exhibitions through conversations and discussions comes from my own personal interest in explicit content and background within the art system. So many amazing exhibitions and events happen that take months, even years, to facilitate and produce, but you only ever see the final product and never anything about what's happened behind the scenes to bring it into existence. I feel like if we could learn more about how and why the exhibition was created and are given an insight into the process of the exhibition and why specific decisions may have been made, it may help us to understand the whole final exhibition more, making the information more approachable and accessible, and I think that's the whole underlying aim of this research project.

My understanding of transdisciplinary is that it’s multiple people from different backgrounds, or disciplines, all working together and collaborating in order to share their individual skills and achieve one cohesive end result. It’s been described as a method of working that creates a holistic approach to research (“holistic” meaning the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole), but I think in regards to my research project and how I’m working, the end product of the exhibitions could be considered to be transdisciplinary rather than the actual development of the project. It’s kind of like I’ve worked backwards to achieve transdisciplinarity, rather than working in a transdisciplinary manner in order to achieve something.

Although this is largely an individual research project, it does have moments where it could be considered to be / to be working in a transdisciplinary manner. The stages of the project where it comes to developing and curating the exhibition are reliant on the collaboration between myself and the artists at that time. We’re all working together, discussing and sharing our ideas to generate what the exhibition is about and how it could be displayed in the space, bringing in skills and aspects from our own individual practises to form one cohesive body of work. I feel like this could be considered to be transdisciplinary as the development of the exhibitions are dependent on everyone involved (myself and the artists) bringing their individual skills and practice to the table, and allowing our work to crossover and combine together to generate a concept or theme for the exhibition. This collaborative approach to curating will be visually documented within the exhibition, intertwining the exhibition research with the artwork as a visual part of the exhibition’s identity. How this information and research is displayed within the space could also be considered to be transdisciplinary as I’m trying to make it exist in the space as its own kind of artwork, and as I am not a practising artist myself, I’m reliant on the skills, ideas and input from the artists that I’m working with to assist me with this, and use their talent, skills and methods to figure out ways of doing this.

What’s interesting to note is that with each exhibition produced within this project, the approach to including the development and research within the exhibition would be completely different each time. There’s so many different formats and techniques that could be used in order to achieve this, whether it’s presented as an actual visual/tangible/physical artwork, as some kind of book or publication, or as a digital output like a video or website. It’s all dependent on the input and ideas of the artists I’m working with, and the ability to come to a mutual agreement on what format could benefit the exhibition and the ideas of the exhibition the most.

Overall, I feel like this isn’t really a fully transdisciplinary project, but definitely has some aspects or components of it that could be considered to be transdisciplinary, or at least have the potential to become or evolve into something more transdisciplinary in the future. At this stage, it feels as though it’s more of a collaborative, holistic project, with the different aspects of the research and the artists all coming together to work through the aims of the project, but the transdisciplinary status of the project can only be realised once I’ve reached the stage of working collaboratively with my artists to create my own curatorial artwork.

At this point, it’s quite hard to acknowledge what the strengths of this project are, given that it’s only just gotten of the ground, and I’m still in the early stages of the first exhibition that will be happening for this project, so it’s quite hard to say what the strengths and weaknesses are just yet. I think it’s still valuable to recognise the key areas of development and possible areas or things that could help or hinder the progress of the project.

One particular strength of this project is that the collaborative nature of the curation of the exhibition means that no two exhibitions will be there same or curated in the same manner, which means that with each exhibition that happens as part of this project, it will give me new ideas and new avenues to explore, new ideas of how to push the research project further and think about curating in new ways, chances to reflect and evaluate on what works about the exhibitions and this particular method of curating, in order to continue progressing with this hands-on approach at a research project.

One potential weak point would be that I’m yet to complete the first exhibition of this project, which I am currently mid-way through developing, which I will then have to reflect on and evaluate in order to decide whether this is a viable approach / method of curating that will help me to realise the aims of my research. If it turns out that this exhibition and this method of curating doesn’t work in the way that I’m hoping it might, I may have to rethink my entire approach to practically conducting this research and curating these exhibitions.