Cabinet Series

The eight exhibitions represent a year's examination of the vitrine as a locus and concept for display in the Contemporary. In all cases, these are new works, and can be seen as responses to the opportunities and the problematic offered by these enclosed spaces. Some of the artists made actual new works, whilst others adapted existing ones in untested configurations.

The term is derived from the cabinet of curiosities dating back to the late Renaissance, which brought together personal and private collections of artifacts and curios. The cabinet can also be seen as relevant to the classic period of Modernism that led to the spatial concept of the ‘White Cube’ that endures to this day. Stripped bare and expanded, the White Cube is not so much a space but an idea. The project is explicitly about artists' making and displaying within the context of the vitrine, a process begun by avant-garde artists in the early 20th Century such as Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell, among others. Here, the artist's role is expanded from that of the maker, to that of the selector and arranger, attributes associated with curatorial practice.