B-Sides

Rebekah Templeton Contemporary / Philadelphia, PA

Part of the CITYWIDE lnitiative
November, 2013

Since 2009, Grizzly Grizzly has been organized as an artists' curatorial collective - where members bring the inside perspective of studio practice to the exhibition space – without showing our own work. Every so often, the members of Grizzly Grizzly have the opportunity to show our own work together.

This is always an exciting opportunity, but we, as members of a curatorial collective, struggle with the context of these group exhibitions. Do we show together only because we curate together? Should we have an overarching conceptual agenda? How will we make the work not look like a faculty show? One of the things that make Grizzly Grizzly's programming exciting is that our membership is diverse, and not limited to one aesthetic or agenda; that makes for a challenge when organizing shows of our own work.

For our CITYWIDE exhibition, we decided to use two strategies we employ for our curatorial work - the studio visit and unexpected pairings of artists - and focus them inward. We've visited one another in the studio to get to know more about the practices we're engaged in and draw connections between ourselves through what and how we make. From these visits each member returned to their own studio, working in response to the other members' works or way of making. Pairings emerged from the process, as the six artist members of Grizzly Grizzly sought the strongest content, process, or conceptual links - still, other connections beyond the pairings persist. The end result is a collaborative effort, a collection of objects that reflect the inner workings that make up the Grizzly Grizzly collective.