The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Mystery maker:
Exhibit A
To some naysayers, modern art is a complete mystery. For Maggie Broadley, the force behind Exhibit A, it offered a chance to merge two of her fascinations: craft design and the whodunnit.
The founder of CoCreate (which promotes crafts and community development) teamed up with Fife Contemporary to launch this unique art show in which visitors try to guess the artists involved through a series of written clues (the incident room) such as biographical details.
Their identities are then revealed before visitors enter the main exhibition room to sample the work.
A fan of tartan noir and Scandi crime, Maggie caught the germ of this idea while reading, fittingly enough, some Norwegian literature, albeit of a nonblood-soaked and felonious kind.
“This all started when I bought a copy of Norwegian Craft, a publication by an organisation that promotes the awareness of contemporary craft in Norway and beyond. One essay went back to the root of the word ‘exhibition’, which was to do with presenting evidence in a court of law. The essay compared it to the way a curator puts together and displays an exhibition while the audience is like a jury interpreting the evidence.”
Once Maggie came up with the basic idea she went to Fife Contemporary director Diana Sykes, setting in motion the plans which are finally coming to fruition from this weekend at the recently reopened Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries.
“I wanted to make an exhibition that people could enjoy, not just those who had an interest in contemporary craft,” says Maggie. “The evidence was to be presented in a way that would engage an audience and would make them want to go on and look at the objects on display. Each artist’s work is very different – they have different experiences, backgrounds and motivations. They don’t all come to crafts as a first career and some were drawn to it not just because of their training but because of things that impacted on their lives. So I wanted to convey that rich story.”
Adding to the intrigue of Exhibit A (A Craft Whodunnit), is the setting of Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, which recently won two prizes at the awards ceremony run by SPACES (Society for Public Architecture, Construction, Engineering and Surveying) in the heritage category and for UK civic building of the year.
“The refurbished Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries is a brilliant space,” says Maggie.
“It has several new gallery spaces and this exhibition will fit well in there. It is all interconnected so in one area are the incident boards with all the clues and in the other there will be the work itself.”