I’ve been reflecting on the exhibition over the last three weeks. It’s almost easier to spend time interrogating our curatorial process in hindsight than it was when we actually doing it. As the lead on creating the audio content for the site, in particular I’ve been listening to the audio pieces over and over again on the website. I can even quote some of them word for word at his point.

Audio was something we were very passionate about including, especially after an introductory session to how art museums use audio for exhibitions by Sam McGuire, Interpretation Curator at Tate. There was a danger, more so now that we were making the move online, that the experience of interacting with the artworks would be bland, flat, lifeless. Although these are concerns for any exhibition, virtual and physical alike, that immediacy and life is already inherent to a physical exhibition. It’s the experience of being there and then, with the works so close you could touch them if you wanted. You are surrounded by other people all talking and moving and actively looking.

We were very conscious that visitors would be experiencing Unquiet Moments very differently. Maybe sat at home, alone, in front of your computer. Something was needed to lift these works off the screen, to give the site a voice, and tell stories to the visitor.

It was this emphasis on companionship and conversation that guided our audio journey. Having all become well acquainted with Zoom calls, I set about interviewing the other nine curators for pieces focussed on guided looking. Similarly, I asked various people, both individuals and families, to reflect on their personal experiences. The stories that emerged were surprisingly intimate windows to their lives, memories and musings. Alongside Berthe Morisot’s intimate etching of herself drawing with her daughter, I interviewed mother and daughter Kim and Daysee Thornton. They talk openly about how they’re relationship has grown over the years and laugh about Kim’s wish for a son. It is this raw and real storytelling alongside Morisot’s touching print that allows us to come to it with our own experiences and relationships and connect with the work.

Another audio accompaniment that I love is the commissioned sound piece for Kathy Prendergast’s sculpture, The End and the Beginning, 1996. Sound artist, Iris Mathieson responded to the artwork by looping together sounds of her hair being brushed and old tapes of her chatting with her mother. The result are these mesmerising layers of sound, that hold a distinct nostalgia and personal resonance.

I’ve learnt a lot about the power of listening during this project. I constructed multitudes of interview questions over the lead up period, often unwittingly attempting to lead the speaker in a direction of my own choice. However, when I left the questions short and open and dictated solely by the speaker’s experience, I was surprised and delighted by the humour and profundity of their responses. Their responses moved me with how powerful these everyday moments and relationships really are.

At a time when we are looking for new visions for the future, we must tap into these feelings of disquiet and of turning in to each other and our surroundings. Coming up with new visions relies on imaginative thinking which is nourished by creative practice: that’s why art and the way it masters the imaginary appear ever so important to me right now.
—Mikhail Karikis, 2020

In March 2020, London ground to a halt. Museums, galleries and cultural centres closed their doors, and we were all left out in the cold, told to return home and await further instruction. The city sat empty, eerily post-apocalyptic. The pandemic has in many ways united the world, bringing human kind together in a rare moment of collective vulnerability. However, the past four months have been different for everyone. Each personal pandemic-tale will be passed between friends for years to come. It has been a time of immense difficulty and devastating loss for so many people, the wake of which will be felt across many generations.

As a group of nine young curators, caught up in the global pandemic whilst studying for a Masters, our story is not one of such devastation. In the context of the world situation, we have been incredibly lucky. We have been able to complete our programme on time, we have continued to learn and work closely as a group, and we have even walked away with new, unexpected skills and expertise that will arm us better than others for the world that awaits.

Producing Unquiet Moments as an online exhibition was not something we ever expected or planned for. Collectively we experienced our own sense of loss, mourning the months of friendship and study in London we had hoped for, stopped in our tracks with the closure of the museums, libraries and archives we had envisaged living among. Above all we seemed to have lost what for many of us would be the first exhibition of our careers. The launching moment of life as a curator.

Four months later, we are on the other side of the great unknown that had stretched before us and we are able to reflect upon and appreciate the things gained by those lost; the windows that opened when the pandemic bluntly slammed the front door shut.

In my role working with the Arts Council Collection and liaising with all our living artists, the greatest gain has been in the relationships and communication made newly possible. Unquiet Moments brings together the work of 25 artists, 19 of which are alive today. We spent time speaking at length with almost all of those artists, which, for a student exhibition sourcing loans through National Collections is remarkable.

We have been astounded by the generosity of these artists to help us with our thinking and inform our interpretation and curatorial approach. It has been a joy to hear their thoughts on the move of their work online and discuss the poigiency of their practices in the pandemic moment. Almost without exception, all have been invigorated and excited by the opportunity to be shown alongside each other – as well as old masters from The Courtauld Collection – made possible by the digital liberation from atmosphere controls and display conditions.

Relationships between the artists have also been gained. Mohini Chandra and Karl Ohiri, whose practices and interests overlap in a multitude of ways, met for the first time this month, and the conversation between them, recorded and archived for years to come, marked a moment of artistic collaborative conversation we never expected. Likewise, Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Mikhail Karikis, old friends and admirers of each other’s work, will come together this week, an event never physically possible due to their geographic separation.

If I were to continue writing about the opportunities of imagining this exhibition online, you would be stuck reading for hours. But this does not render the physical irrelevant. As museums begin tentatively to reopen, the human need for physical cultural encounters will appear clearer than ever. However, I believe we are moving into a world where these two things must live in parallel, where the focus is no longer on replacing that which is lost, but maintaining what has been newly acquired.

When I am asked in years to come where I was during the (First) Great Lockdown of 2020, I expect I will respond that I was on the vanguard of a new moment of cultural experience, learning what might be gained in the face of loss.