Things of the Least:
Lively exhibition-making through the material encounters of under-3s
image copyright Manchester Art Gallery/Ben Blackall
An invitation for artists to apply to be part of a collaborative team, building new exhibitions that bring together encounters with the under-3s and the Mary Greg collection at Manchester Art Gallery.
About Things of the Least
Things of the Least is a new, experimental exhibition-making programme, and the first UK pilot project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Exhibition Fund. It brings together the practices of artists, curators and education researchers to generate a series of gallery and live public experiences to energise the relationship between artefacts and daily life. To do this the project seeks to understand the ways that very young children engage with the material world and uses their encounters, gestures, movements, noises and story-living to re-imagine ways to encounter a collection. By developing exhibitions in this way children’s priorities can be used to unsettle powerful assumptions about what is deemed valuable, and by who, and how artefacts should be encountered.
The focus of all activities is the Mary Greg collection. Greg donated her collection of over 4,000 objects of domestic life and childhood, mainly from the 1700s-1900s, to MAG in 1922. The collection’s focus is on the intimate, meaningful practices of everyday life, “treasuring things of the least” (Ruskin, cited in Mitchell, 2017:6) that might seem insignificant and humble, yet anchor us deeply in a sense of belonging. From cutlery to clothing, books and drinking cups, the collection is full of the home-made and home-used, embodying the principle of everyday creativity. Every artefact would have been manipulated by hand, hence our desire to put the collection ‘back in touch’.
The Mary Greg collection is currently (mainly) housed at Platt Hall. Platt Hall is an 18th century textile merchant’s house in Platt Fields Park, two miles south of Manchester city centre. It is Manchester Art Gallery’s last surviving ‘branch gallery’, one of six sites in residential neighbourhoods that once formed a citywide network of community museums and galleries. It is currently the subject of community-led redevelopment as a centre for the exploration of everyday creativity and collections for social health and wellbeing.
images copyright Manchester Art Gallery/Ben Blackall
The project focuses on the activity of ‘exhibition-making’ instead of ‘curating’ to recognise the complex, collaborative, material and social processes that go into making a physical encounter- and the possibilities for doing this differently. ‘Exhibition-making’ considers people, artefacts and all sites of encounter, including the restrictions and atmospheres of place, and the wider communication of ‘exhibition’ in print and online. ‘Exhibition-making’ also generates contexts for museum curation, gallery education, research and contemporary art practice to work together to unsettle divisions between forms of knowledge and production. This is inspired, in part by 1960s intermedia arts and the 1960/70s Tropicalia movement, which emphasised senses, body and movement, and the inseparability of objects, space and people.
Through our partnerships we hope to ignite new experimental exhibition practices, grow the exhibition-makers, artists and researchers of the future and to develop ways to use limited space, inside and outside the gallery, to deepen inclusion.
Who we are looking for:
Two active contemporary artists (or artistic partnerships) working in any medium/or multiple media- this could include, but is not limited to, sculpture, installation, public art, print/publication, live art, film, animation, participatory practices, painting, digital arts, drawing, art textiles etc etc.
Three active contemporary artists working in any medium/or multiple media (as above) with experience of working with children from birth to five years in some capacity and ideally with a number of different organisations.
All artists will meet the following criteria:
-A proven interest in working as artist with communities or exploring other people’s experiences, or of responding to place.
-A proven track record of working collaboratively with other artists, designers or researchers- and understanding the value of, and ways to work with different perspectives
-Evidence of an interest in exploring exhibition-making: ie how all elements interrelate to make an encounter.
-A commitment to working in a multi-media team and to contributing to collective works- which may involve some translation/post-production of artistic works into coherent group visual language
-An interest in the perspective of children and the ways that very young children encounter the world
-An interest in museum collections
-Experience in working responsively in public spaces and responding creatively to restrictions.
-The flexibility to dedicate time to museum visits, working with communities in public locations museum and public spaces
-An interest or experience of working in a multi-disciplinary research team
- Own work space. We do not provide a studio so the development of some work would take place in your existing workspace/studio.
What will the commission involve?
The project starts in September 2023, with three visits to the Mary Greg Collection at Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery. There, artists will be shown the collection by curator Liz Mitchell. We will be given time to reflect on the collection and to pick a number of objects/types of object that really interest us and that we think have qualities that will interest others, and especially under-3s.
From these initial engagements with the Mary Greg Collection, we will go on to develop a ‘Mary Greg playkit’. This will involve developing the sensory and narrative qualities of selected objects from the collection into 10–15 prototypes: sound or movement- based pieces, physical objects or digital artefacts specifically designed to engage young children and families and to explore children’s interactions. The development of the play kit will involve working independently and in a team.
Between November 2023 and February 2024 we will be watching the objects in use, and keeping visual diaries to capture how children play with the playkit. This will happen at three separate groups, some in the museum, and some in domestic housing spaces in Manchester, including temporary housing used for asylum. Between February- September 2024 we will be working as teams to develop ideas and bringing in additional craftspeople and exhibition- installation specialists to help us realise the exhibitions. These will take ideas developed from the experiences with the playkit, to re-imagine ways that visitors of all ages can move, engage, touch and play, transforming the Mary Greg collection into a spatial encounter.
There will be three key outputs between October 2024-March 2025. This will include an exhibition at Platt Hall and/or Manchester Art Gallery. The exhibition will be considered as living event, rather than presenting finished singular works. We will work with students from MMU to continue to animate the exhibition, seeing it as a continuation of the earlier live processes. The exhibition will extend into three more encounters- as pageant, as artefacts or encounters for homes or public spaces, and as not-for-profit, small-run products for continued ‘play’. Following this will be time for review and reflection- until the project ends in April 2026.
The project is led by:
Principle Investigator: Rachel Holmes, Professor of Cultural Studies of Childhood, Manchester Metropolitan University, https://www.mmu.ac.uk/staff/profile/professor-rachel-holmes
Early-Years Senior Research Fellow, Christina MacRae, Manchester Metropolitan University.
https://www.mmu.ac.uk/staff/profile/dr-christina-macrae
Manchester Art Gallery
Learning Manager, Families, Katy McCall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vaH0JhqrEQ
Curator, Platt Collections, Liz Mitchell
http://www.marymaryquitecontrary.org.uk/about
Lead artist, Becky Shaw, Reader in Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University.
Fee
The commission time is understood as 44 days ea.@ £298.20 /day, so is a total fee of £13,120.80 and will be paid via invoice in instalments at three key points. There is also additional travel support for local travel to Manchester. There is a separate budget for production materials.
How to apply
Please send your application in English, by email, to Becky Shaw b.shaw@shu.ac.uk
Your application should consist of one attached document in word or pdf, that includes all of the following:
· A CV
An expression of interest which is no more than 2 pages and describes
· why you would like to undertake this work,
· how you meet the criteria
· how you imagine the work developing (this will be understood as speculative rather than definite).
· inclusion of examples of your practice ideally via web links to online collections/repositories/web pages, or by adding images into the document. Please don’t send separate jpgs.
We strongly encourage anyone who feels they meet the criteria to apply, and especially encourage applications from artists from racially excluded communities, or who live with disabilities.
Try to make it clear in your expression of interest how you meet the criteria. If you feel you meet some aspects and not others we would still encourage you to apply.
For any further questions please do email: Becky Shaw. b.shaw@shu.ac.uk
Deadline: 5pm August 17th 2023.
Online interview dates for short-listed artists will take place in September and we will let you know whether you have been shortlisted by 27th August.