The 17 students who have collaborated as artist/curators to mount 'footnotes17' are the first cohort to undertake a one-year, full time Masters in Culture, Criticism and Curation at the Kings Cross Central St Martins campus, University of the Arts London. 

 

Representing nine nations - from Australia to France, Italy, Malta, Mauritius, Poland, the United States, Turkey and the UK - the students come from all walks of life and professional backgrounds, including graphic design, architecture, gallery and music curation, photography and journalism to pharmacy and arts festival management.

 

The group worked closely collectively and as individuals to create and mount an exhibition based loosely on the concept of archive and inspired by The Guardian and Observer. The only parameter to the project was the physical limit created by the exhibition space within the lobby of the newspapers' Kings Cross headquarters. 

 

Each day for 17 days, a newspaper is 'archived' and framed while each individual's response is 'published' and mounted beneath its physical 'Guardian' inspiration.   While the newspaper itself distils 24 hours into a collection of pages, a circumscribed report of newsworthy events, the creative response to the  process aims to build a history unlimited by the major stories of the day. As a result, an entirely  new parallel archive is built and shaped, unconstricted by the newspaper’s hierarchy of attention.

 

Through the concept of footnotes, these daily interventions allow a tangential movement away from the main text, offering new opportunities to explore alternative explanations, peripheral  information or overshadowed stories.