‘Touch Me’ Is an online Curated exhibition of 51 artists, exploring the relationships of touch within their art works during this global pandemic. Curated by Veronika Neukirch, the exhibition is split into three ‘rooms’, this makes it have more of a resemblance to a physical exhibition. Once inside the ‘room’ it feels like a map of an area that we; the viewers are navigating across to find these art works. The layout has the works scattered across the webpage, making the show more interactive as the viewer has to scroll in all directions to access all the works, much like if the viewer were walking around a physical show. This curation makes the exhibition feel more personal and physical than the normally structured; computer generated setting of a website.
“Uncovering a wide variety of relationships between artist and creation, the works on the show demonstrate performative potential, tone and haptics while digitally catering to the also touchdeprived viewer of 2020.”
The works displayed in this exhibition all have very individual qualities about them, they also elevate each other and speak a distinct language that unifies them in this exploration of touch. Some of the artistssuch as Grace Woodcock, Millie Laing-Tate, Sophie Kemp, Joshua Kane Gomes and Vincent Chen explore touch through other means. Grace Woodcocks piece ‘Portal for Magnotherapy’ speaks about this touch hunger we as a society are experiencing during this time of a global pandemic and is an exploration of touch without touching. I see similarities in this idea within all the artists work but direct connections can be seen to Sophie Kemp’s work ‘The Lemon Game’ passing around a giant lemon. Both works create an extension of the body that are used to touch without touching.
The three divided ‘rooms’ of the exhibition are all named after songs that include and speak about touching. ‘Do you wanna touch?’ -Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, ‘Touch me I’m sick’ -Mudhoney, ‘The Magic Touch’ -The Bobby Fuller Four. Often music is described as being able to touch the metaphorical hearts of people across the world, it has the ability to connect on an emotional level with people. Perhaps this emotional connection between the songs and the rooms is also related to the way the work makes the viewer feel, it’s all about the connections between people that is created through this tension of non-touching. Curator Veronika Neukirch said that she felt each room had a slightly different tone and the three songs encapsulated these tones and helped set up the rooms and the general tone of the exhibition.
“TOUCH ME asked its artists to return their artworks for play: to add an additional layer, unveil a hidden interpretation, relocate contexts or fulfil the artwork’s implications and potential.” This isseen throughout the works displayed but also in the way the exhibition is curated. As mentioned previously with its exhibited works scattered across the webpage it becomes interactive but also more visually stimulating and playful to the viewer.
Overall, this was a fantastically curated exhibition that displays a lot of thought and balance on how an online exhibition could and can be done. The individual works were extremely interesting but as a whole they have their own language and bursts of tension that ping off of each other to make the exhibition that little bit more curious and exciting.
Quotes taken from Exhibition press release
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