Using the recent selection of works I curated for a permanent display of ceramics at Paisley Museum, Scotland (opening in Summer 2024) I will explore the rationale I adopted to select a small number of objects (20) for display. These were taken from a vast and eclectic collection of ceramics, notably consisting of 19th century ornate and functional objects, British studio ceramics (1958 - 1982), and Scottish studio wares (1971 – 1988). The display is a high-density wall display, with limited capacity for interpretive text and captioning. The selection has focussed on key ceramics from the collection (Leach, Rie, Coper, Britton, Henderson, Fritsch, Suttie, Poncelet). This will be interspersed with industrial wares, (Wedgwood, Bells, Govancroft). The selection has tried to balance the breadth of the collection whilst including some significant works.
The positioning of works allows for different connections to be made and these connections will be open to multiple interpretations. The display seeks to evoke a rhizomatic approach to encourage ‘lines of flight’ (O’Sullivan 2000), provoking new readings of works, which are already imbued with language evoking human behaviour, encounters, objects, landscapes for example. The approach could be seen as a “machinic assemblage”, a space where different complexes can aggregate together (Guattari 1995). The rhizome, as anti-hierarchical and a-centred, will foster transversal and a-logical connections with multiple starting points of contact and communication between disparate and autonomous objects.
In this paper I wish to reflect on the decisions I made in response to the collection and the limited number of objects that could be included in the display. I will consider my approach, which seeks to offer an egalitarian and open-ended experience; encouraging and empowering the viewer to enjoy, relish, and take inspiration from what they encounter. Through an exploration of my curatorial aims this paper proposes that such an open-ended display of objects, with considerations made to geometry and appeal, may encourage a multiplicity of readings through encounters which may animate a fixed museum display.