Artlines (Queensland Art Gallery).
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Every issue, we invite an artist, curator or friend of the Gallery to share their practice and passions with us. Here, Artlines spoke with curator Robert Leonard, who recently re-joined Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art as Director (for a second time), and whose career spans more than thirty years of curatorial, publishing, and gallery directorship experience.

Explain the essence of your practice.

I’m an art curator, an exhibition maker. I make shows out of curiosity. I trained at the National Art Gallery in New Zealand in the mid-1980s, where I worked directly with collections, rather than with artists—which would come later. Curators occupy a central place in art, straddling art production (the realm of the artist) and art reception (the realm of the viewer).

Where did you grow up and how do you think this has influenced your practice?

I grew up in Auckland in the late 1960s and 1970s. I had a monocultural upbringing. Television was our window on the world—British and American programs—on just two channels. Magazines took months to arrive by sea and were full of ads for stuff we couldn’t buy. My parents hadn’t been to university and weren’t cultured, but my father did take me to the MoMA Surrealism show at Auckland Art City Gallery when I was nine. Other than that, I came to art through the public library, through art books.

Describe your work area.

I work on a laptop, lying on the couch at home or sitting at tables in cafés. I got thrown out of a café recently for ‘treating it as an office’.

What, if anything, do you listen to while you work?

At home, I work with the TV on. It really doesn’t matter what, so long as I can vaguely follow it or totally ignore it, without getting caught up in it. I get more distracted by silence.

What is your most important tool?

The delete key.

What are your favourite parts of the creative process?

Spitballing at the beginning and celebrating at the end, less the slog in the middle.

What do you procrastinate over?

I don’t procrastinate over starting projects, but I do over finishing them. I get lost in the pleasures of tweaking—putting in a comma, taking it out, putting it back in.

What do you do when you’re not feeling inspired?

I proofread, I put things in alphabetical order, I scroll Facebook, I check my bank balance.

What international art destination do you most want to visit?

I love art pilgrimages. I’ve been to the Emma Kunz Zentrum in Würenlos, to Theaster Gates’s Stony Island Art Bank in Chicago, and to Anselm Kiefer’s complex La Ribaute in Barjac. Michael Heizer’s City in the Nevada desert is next on my bucket list.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

In 1992, I had the ludicrous idea that the world’s most famous art critic might write for a small magazine I was publishing from the small regional museum in New Zealand where I was curator. I found Rosalind Krauss’s number in Flash Art Diary and gave her a call. When I put it to her, she said, calmly but pointedly: ‘Why should I do that?’ I froze; I had no answer. Now, I never ask anyone anything without asking myself first: What’s in it for them?

Which of your shows are you most proud of? Why?

Mixed-Up Childhood. Janita Craw and I curated it for Auckland Art Gallery in 2005. It had a wild lineup, including AES+F, Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Henry Darger, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Inez van Lamsweerde, Sally Mann, Shintaro Miyake, Steven Meisel, Tracey Moffatt, Grayson Perry, Yvonne Todd, and Sima Urale. The show looked at our twisted, conflicted views of children and childhood. It managed to be edgy but relatable, pushy but popular. Chris Saines was Director at the time, and bravely backed us to the hilt.

How has your practice changed over time?

As a curator, I used to juxtapose works explicitly, overtly. Now I tend to do it more subtly, so viewers think they are themselves making the connections. When viewers mansplain my shows to me, it’s working.

Are artists valued in our society?

We value the idea of the artist, but not the reality.

Who’s your favourite living artist?

Pierre Huyghe. I left his show After ALife Ahead, in Munster in 2017, feeling disoriented and decentred, questioning my very terms of reference. ‘Heterogeneous dynamic systems—organisations, biotic and abiotic, real and symbolic, material and immaterial—are shifting configuration in real time in an uncertain symbiosis’, as someone explained.

What’s your favourite local watering hole or restaurant?

Jamie’s in Robertson Street. It’s perfect for those of us who want to remain at an arm’s length from James Street glamour, but only an arm’s length.

[IMAGE: Rosalind Krauss, in the late 1970s. What was I thinking?]