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Apple Rations by Jaden Sharma

The show happened as a huge rush. I don’t think I could have planned my time any better as we were all working at full speed already, trying to finish furnishing the space whilst I was juggling speaking with Terry on the first show.



I was glad at how it turned out though. The setup took 2 long draggy nights but it was a nice process speaking in hush tones with Terry, contemplating mostly in silence about honestly mundane, minute, and non-significant (perhaps significant) shifts in the show. It was memorable in its own way. The relationality of the materials, stickers on chairs, affected the way we approached the setup. It was very collaborative and very silly, but overall a nice memory to keep of spending time with Terry.


A big part of this project is about me trying out the role as a curator. What I learnt was that curation has to be a labour of love. To work with artists and invite them to show, there is a responsibility on the curator to really invest time and attention to them. I realised this also as I was reflecting on several other shows that I had worked on. That the most valuable thing a curator could give is often misunderstood to be the show itself. Such an assumption plays on certain misconceptions that th



I had also learnt this from Selene and Jia Yun, who curated one of the biggest shows I have participated in, Opening Day at Upper Serangoon Shopping Centre. I benefitted a lot from their tireless commitment to studio visits, meetings and meals to forge a relationship with me, to the point where it is safe to say that they understood me a fair bit. To be personally entangled with the artist’s life may be a good thing or a bad thing.

For Terry, I imagined such a working relationship would be something he’d appreciate. Hence, we built the show rather slowly, through constant conversations and casual meetups, almost letting the show build itself. I do wish that I could have handled the stress better though. Even though I was working with friends, the excessive communication and did stretch me very much and I was struggling to maintain that energy and commitment I was constantly reminding myself was important to running the show and the space.





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