Abstract
Paramanik’s innovative curatorial project, Reflections 2018, explores the subversion of the role of fashion in exploring new paradigms of audience engagement and communication. This research aims to study the exhibition phenomenologically, thereby determining the nature of the dialogue between the displayed artefact(s) and the audience.
The critical ground for the research was an examination of nearly a decade of collaborative partnership between Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the School of International Education (Dalian Polytechnic University, China). The curatorial practice built on the legacy of actions and outcomes of Paramanik’s past practice, beginning with Mindfulness 2015, and progressing significantly through iterations to Reflections 2018.
As exhibitions, both temporary and permanent, have boundaries which are often blurred between cultural and commercial subjects (Dernie, 2006), it is highly important to understand how visual and sensorial knowledge is distributed. The engagement between the body and bodily movement within the exhibition space has the potential to show new approaches to a successful design methodology, with the purpose of broadening the presentation of fashion cultures to ‘…explore notions relating to image and reality, the seen and the unseen …. which brings the value system underlying the museum collection itself into doubt’ (Healy, 2016).
Exhibition design, irrespective of its field, overlaps a wide range of design subjects in order to clearly communicate with audiences. It is symbiotic and experimental. In terms of spatial intervention, interior design is its closest relative (Locker, 2011). The findings from this research therefore established the development of a new space for exhibition and audience, relevant to the wider field of exhibition design, that was much more effective in displaying the designed products through Minimalist methods. Moreover, it showed how the effective use of spatial elements in the designed space, transformed appropriation and engagement.
The critical ground for the research was an examination of nearly a decade of collaborative partnership between Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the School of International Education (Dalian Polytechnic University, China). The curatorial practice built on the legacy of actions and outcomes of Paramanik’s past practice, beginning with Mindfulness 2015, and progressing significantly through iterations to Reflections 2018.
As exhibitions, both temporary and permanent, have boundaries which are often blurred between cultural and commercial subjects (Dernie, 2006), it is highly important to understand how visual and sensorial knowledge is distributed. The engagement between the body and bodily movement within the exhibition space has the potential to show new approaches to a successful design methodology, with the purpose of broadening the presentation of fashion cultures to ‘…explore notions relating to image and reality, the seen and the unseen …. which brings the value system underlying the museum collection itself into doubt’ (Healy, 2016).
Exhibition design, irrespective of its field, overlaps a wide range of design subjects in order to clearly communicate with audiences. It is symbiotic and experimental. In terms of spatial intervention, interior design is its closest relative (Locker, 2011). The findings from this research therefore established the development of a new space for exhibition and audience, relevant to the wider field of exhibition design, that was much more effective in displaying the designed products through Minimalist methods. Moreover, it showed how the effective use of spatial elements in the designed space, transformed appropriation and engagement.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | 798 Art District, Beijing |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |