The Collection Amplifier: Rose Lejeune
Collectors should be encouraged to support the whole gamut of contemporary practice; it is when these funding mechanisms come together that the ecosystem can thrive.
5 QUESTIONS WITH Rose Lejeune
Founding Director, Performance Exchange; Curator; Consultant
London, England
Rose Lejeune is a curator and researcher with a specific interest in commissioning and collecting context-based, social and performative practices. She has built a reputation for strategic overview and curatorial innovation and in 2020 was named in ArtNet’s Intelligence Report as a “global innovator” for her work on expanding collections.
Rose is the Director of Performance Exchange, a UK-wide project working to embed performance within public and private collections. Rose is also the Associate Curator for the Delfina Foundation’s Collecting as Practice programme where she developed the groundbreaking programme that looks at the politics and economics of global collections. In 2021, she is curating the live programme for Abu Dhabi Art for the second time, and is a guest curator for LOOP, the video art fair, in Barcelona. Rose’s full bio follows this interview.
1. What constitutes a “more sustainable cultural ecosystem”?
Obviously sustainability has many strands and I don't think one can unpick environmental sustainability from issues of social justice, to speak on this from the perspective work I’m doing at the moment, it's really about addressing the ways in which the economic situation of artists has radically changed over the last few decades and the effects this has on who can make work in the current paradigm. Basic living costs are immeasurably higher than they were even 20 years ago, the cost of education in the UK has sky-rocketed, and we've experienced large-scale public funding cuts and this means many young artists face an increasingly hostile environment – living and making work in a city like London is simply no longer possible unless you come from a privileged background or have a market.
At the moment, this creates these fault lines through the kinds of practices that are visible - the art market in London has expanded into a significantly more powerful force yet only accommodates a very narrow band of material practices. Likewise, we are very lucky to have lots of great live programmes in London and the UK, but the model they work on is ticketing and public funding that prioritises large audience numbers. So there is a lack of more intimate environments for work on different registers.
My project Performance Exchange - a dispersed platform for performance art in commercial galleries which provides acquisitions information around the works - is trying to recognise how important the long-term support of commercial galleries can be for artists, and to show galleries that support work that isn't immediately ‘market-ready’. The idea of the acquisitions information is to help support understanding around how that work could be collected and supported privately. We also have three UK museums we’re working with to acquire works from the programme. For me, this is also about creating a cross-sector dialogue and moving beyond the very entrenched public-private divide to see how, by sharing expertise, as broad a spectrum of practices as possible can be supported now, and understood in the future.
2. Has COVID changed the ways we organize, fund, consume, and collect performance? How has it impacted, in your words, the “development of ideas and artistic process outside of traditional gallery spaces”?
Of course it's too early to answer a lot of these questions in terms of a long-term view... In terms of my own work and the immediate… I actively resisted putting Performance Exchange online over 2020, precisely because I wanted it to speak to that more intimate, thoughtful register which is still only possible IRL, in a room, with an audience and the work itself. On the other hand I curated a programme for Abu Dhabi Art ‘In the Round’ which was four commissions, filmed in 360 during the 2020 lockdown, and shown online in 360 (we sent some people goggles) and as VR projections in Abu Dhabi and London. Each of the artists chose a location where they were - London, Berlin, Lisbon and Abu Dhabi - all in abandoned or empty spaces, places where actually you couldn't necessarily take an audience, and created a performance-to-camera that was then shown in these formats. For me, curatorially, the experiment was to see how the 360 filming and projections could create an immersive environment which would still implicate the viewer in the space of the performance, even though the work wasn't live in the traditional sense. That was really only produced because of Covid - necessity is the mother of invention - and my being asked to think about a live programme at that moment where no one could travel to congregate. But it definitely pushed my thinking of what spaces of performance can be into a new place.
3. How can performance best resonate with next generation audiences? With regards to the public and private collections with which you work, do you see a shift to more fully engage with rising generations?
Do I see a shift? Some small, yes. At the moment there is still a gap between these ephemeral aspects of a practice and the material elements that flow through the art market in which the gatekeepers are heavily invested (in every sense of that word). I think it's super interesting how the narrative around NFTs for example has completely collapsed that material need - seemingly without anyone noticing (what you think about the art produced is another question of course). And a new generation of museum curators and collectors are absolutely taking it on so...
Performance art has gone from being pretty underground and niche to a mainstay of major museums and large-scale festivals in a relatively short space of time. It has also become an increasingly important part of a great number of contemporary artists’ practice - both as a discrete, stand-alone practice, and within much broader constellations of work, from painting to ceramics, film, drawing, and installation as well as participation and activism. Within that I think it resonates with artists and audiences in the same ways - in that it's direct, experiential, it's both individual and collectively experienced; and those elements are absolutely what we're coming to expect from our cultural interactions.
4. The events of this past year — a global health crisis, a pandemic-induced economic crisis, and a growing social justice movement — have accelerated the changes next generation creatives, audiences, and arts supporters want to see. How can we build off this energy and create better, more effective, and more equitable funding mechanisms for the arts?
One of the things that is really important to me at the moment is breaking down the binaries that certainly the UK art world has operated through; public vs. private, critical vs. commercial, and moving towards a more nuanced cross-sector conversation about how to support broad and diverse artists and practice. Not all live art is suited to the ticketing model audiences that festivals and museum presentations need, and painters should also be able to make non-commercially viable work.
The case for public funding of the arts must continue to be made while collectors should be encouraged to support the whole gamut of contemporary practice. It is when these funding mechanisms come together, recognising their interconnectedness and what each does well and not so well, that the ecosystem can thrive.
For that matter you can say the same about education, health, tech, etc. In the UK we've had an accelerated drive towards relying on private support in the last decade and that is, rightly, being put under the spotlight. The first question is of course where does the money come from and does that align with my politics or ethics? But then: l how do I use those resources I have to serve those core values?
5. Arts Funders Forum (AFF)’s current research survey, "Next-Generation Cultural Philanthropy: Driving positive social transformation through arts funding," is collecting data on the intersection of the arts and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), building off of one of our key pillars - that next-generation philanthropists care deeply about the impact their giving has on their communities and greater society. How do you see the connection between arts funding and social impact, and how do you see the work of Performance Exchange - and your work as a curator, writer, and consultant - aligning with this finding?
My background as a curator was in producing public and participatory art, working on long-term projects in communities and different kinds of contexts. I've always been more drawn to practice situated in the ‘real’ world than museums so coming into the space of collecting was kind of a strange turn for me.
In a very basic way, I started by wondering what the cultural memory of those kinds of practices was and how to support them in collections. Now I approach collections from the idea of asking how things like duration, interaction, participation, the work’s integrity as a performative gesture remain in an artwork through the process of its collecting. Also, through my work on the programme at Delfina Foundation, curating their Collecting as Practice programme, asking how we interact with and deconstruct the collections, especially colonial collections, in the UK. Collections ultimately create forms of communal and public ownership, shared experiences and connections over time.
Collections form what we know of the past and give us mirrors to hold up against ourselves today - so, for me, pulling them apart, and also re-building with the broadest spectrum of practice incorporated, becomes a way of understanding both how artists want to communicate and to whom they can speak.
Rose Lejeune is a curator and researcher with a specific interest in commissioning and collecting context-based, social and performative practices. She has built a reputation for strategic overview and curatorial innovation and in 2020 was named in ArtNet’s Intelligence Report as a “global innovator” for her work on expanding collections.
Rose is the Director of Performance Exchange, a UK-wide project working to embed performance within public and private collections. Rose is also the Associate Curator for the Delfina Foundation’s Collecting as Practice programme where she developed the groundbreaking programme that looks at the politics and economics of global collections. In 2021, she is curating the live programme for Abu Dhabi Art for the second time, and is a guest curator for LOOP, the video art fair, in Barcelona.
Rose’s current curatorial activities have developed following a decade of working with public organisations throughout the UK to commission for non-gallery situations. This includes as Curator at Art on the Underground, and Education Projects Curator at the Serpentine Gallery. Rose holds a BA in Philosophy and Art History, and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art. Finally, Rose is currently a PhD candidate in Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where her research focuses on histories of performance art in, and out, of the art market.
The Path Forward interview series, an initiative of MCW Projects LLC, investigates how cultural and philanthropic leaders are re-envisioning the future of the arts.