ARTISTS TALKING

Emily Druiff studied fine art and graphics at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, graduating with a BA Hons in 1998. It was here she developed an interest in event based and participatory work and making art outside the usual gallery framework. Druiff also became interested in collaborating with other artists working in a similar way, which was where her interest in developing a curatorial practice began.

Camberwell connections

Whilst studying at Camberwell Druiff utilised a shop window in Peckham as a venue for her project, inviting members of the public to engage with the work by writing questions directly onto the wall. A decade later, Druiff is now employed as Director of Peckham Pier, curating a socially engaged public art programme in Peckham and also teaches short courses on Independent Curating at Central Saint Martins. Druiff is interested in how placing artworks in accessible public spaces has become a more accepted way of working by artists and art establishments alike. Her first exhibition in this post was ‘I Love Peckham Shop Windows’ in August 2007, featuring thirty artists residencies in thirty shops.

www.ilovepeckhamshopwindows.org

The importance of partnerships

The notion of partnership working as a curatorial model is something that Druiff is keen to promote; she is currently forging strong links between Camberwell College of the Arts and Southwark Council. The partnership has so far been successful and she hopes that the artist’s residency in shops in Peckham will become an annual feature of her programming. Partnership working is fundamental to Druiff’s approach and she feels that this can facilitate something that is mutually beneficial to the involved parties.

Early curatorial practice

Initially upon graduating, Druiff worked as an artist as well as a curator. In her first few years after college she organised events with Café Gallery Projects, London. Starting out as an invigilator, she then went on to organise a performance festival called InterAction (1998) as part of Bermondsey Carnival, whereby artists worked in and around the fun fair. Druiff became the Live Art Programmer at Dilston Grove in 1999 where she organised several seasons of events. Part of the programme was ‘In the event of an emergency’, where twelve artists were invited to live and work in the venue. On this occasion Southwark Park Church functioned as a live / work space for artists to inhabit whilst creating site responsive projects. This proved to be quite pivotal time in the development of her curatorial practice, taking work out of the gallery and using the site as a production space.

In 2000 Druiff co-founded the artist-run space Area 10 located in a disused wood yard behind Peckham Library (www.area10.info) Initially artists lived and worked at the space and also helped to run it. Area 10 was not a studio or a gallery, but functioned as a collaborative production space for experimental projects. As one of the largest art spaces in London there would be up to several thousand people at openings, “more what you would experience in Berlin than in London”. The space is still functioning and has been granted charity status and a five-year lease, although Druiff is no longer involved.

Curatorial studies

It was at this point Druiff started to question her role as an artist, realising she was being pulled in two directions – the organisational role versus the making role. She began to think about organisational techniques as part of the creative process and stopped thinking of herself as an artist and more as a facilitator. She decided to formalise her curatorial training and returned to education, undertaking the Curatorial Masters at Goldsmiths College, University of London from 2003 to 2005. This allowed her to focus on her interest in working critically outside of the gallery context.

At Goldsmiths she met Louise Garrett with whom she collaborated on ‘Southwalk’, which consisted walks between artist run spaces and disused spaces in South London. Delegates were invited to meet each other at points on the journey and record conversations around the topic of artist run space, public space and discursive practices. Druiff also became very interested in discussion as an art form. She went on to co-curate a discussion series at the Whitechapel Gallery posing the question “Is The Gallery Obsolete?” where artists discussed and showcased their work. Druiff was keen to promote artist-run spaces as successful models for self-organisation. She devised a project called Relay, a game that aimed to map collective spaces across London using The University of Openness website, under the Faculty of Collaboration. For Relay spaces are asked to nominate another space, who in turn would nominate another space and so forth creating a self-generating online database. After graduation, Druiff curated a project as part of the Prague Biennale that worked with Talkaoke, as a forum for artist run spaces to have a platform for debate at the National Gallery as part of the Biennale.

In 2005 Druiff embarked on linking the two artworks Talkaoke and Peacepod via audio streaming for a project called SCAN.fm, standing for Structures for Collaborative Audio Networks. This project was part inspired by meetings with NODE.London, and as such became part of a month long season of media art in March 2006. The project was managed in partnership with Ann Lawlor, who was then working at The Art of Change based in East London. Lawlor was interested in the practices that Druiff was working with, and as such gave support and encouragement to professionally realise the project. http://nodel.org/projects.php?ID=96

Future plans

Druiff is becoming increasingly interested in the democratic potential of art provided by the combination of participatory practices, new media and open source platforms. As such she is keen to meet new artists working with these concerns. Coming from an artist background she is interested in having an ongoing dialogue with the artist around questions such as, “at is it that contextualises a project? And “Would you like people to see your work?” She is interested in practices that are doing something new in relationship to its audience: “I think what’s really needed are more curators who are working from the artists’ perspective. Curators that are able to put across the work successfully to audiences because it’s something they believe in and want to see as a recognised artistic practice.”

Emily can be contacted at e.druiff@camberwell.arts.ac.uk

Lee Simmons

Lee Simmons is an artist based in the South of England.