Senior curator at the photographers gallery in London - set up in 1971
Landeding an internship at “Surface” which asked her to organise her first exhibition, Mcquid was pointed towards visual artist and magazines, moved to London with hopes to be an editor. She had a freelance experience with publication at “Tank” but left fashion and the magazine career and focused on photography part as she enjoyed this part the most.
Started at the photography gallery doing a internship, moved her way up organising the talks and events. This was a brilliant way to interact with artists all all photographic fields.
First failure was from a 3D artist who wanted to preform during a lecture. He wanted to invite his friends, and Mcguaid didn’t know the friends name and was too embarrassed to say she didn’t know who they were. They turned up with a prop too big to fit inside the gallery.
The first exhibition Mcquaid had full control over was about refugee stories Jim who used to go off grid for months at a time to shot, this stressed Mcquaid out a lot as it was her first time organising.
A very challenging show was when Karen had to contact 100 families to ask if she could borrow physical photo albums for an artist to borrow. Personal contact skills were pushed to the test as she wanted to see the family personally, not send an intern.
Mcquid once travelled to Brazil to talk to artists and discuss their influences, a name that kept coming up was Geraldo deBarros. She set up a exhibition of his work as she was fascinated by his direct, creative work.
Biggest project Mcquaid organised was with Jason Evens and Ivan Vertanain to produce an exhibition about contemporary Japanese photo books. They decided that it would be best if viewers could touch and read the books shown. Over 200 books we displayed around the room, with picnic benches in the middle of the room for people to sit and spend time with the books.
A lot of artists don’t make books as their is no profit in it, so with some left over money, Mcquaid used the money to celebrate and co publish with independent publishing houses across the UK to help them out.
If I am giving the opportunity with a publisher to put out a new book, test out the water and help out others. If I know someone who would be a good book designer, ask them to help.
No matter how much you plan and create computer generated models, you must leave some space for physically standing. The actual space will never be as perfect as you plan it to be.
‘your career will not be one steady incline of ever increasing successes’