Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) (in conjunction with The Glasgow School of Art) [MLitt] postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Twice a month, the independent cinema where I work screens something on 16mm, and I am the person who threads the projector. The film has to follow a precise path through the gate and sprockets, with loops of exactly the right size, or the image judders. I enjoy the job partly because it is a reminder that every screening is a physical event, prepared by someone, in a particular room. That interest in how work reaches an audience, rather than only in the work itself, is what has led me towards curatorial study.

I studied English and Film and graduated with a 2:1. My dissertation looked at how a regional cinema near my hometown had programmed short films by artists alongside features over roughly a decade. Using printed programmes and leaflets from the cinema's own archive boxes, and a conversation with a long-serving programmer, I traced how the pairings changed: early on, an artist's film was often presented as a curiosity before the main feature, while later seasons gave such films their own evenings with introductions. I argued that context, not just content, determined whether audiences read these films as art, entertainment or filler. The project taught me to work slowly with incomplete records and to be honest about what they cannot show.

Since graduating I have worked at the cinema for three years, first on front of house and then training as a projectionist. The work is ordinary in many ways: cashing up, managing queues, cleaning the screen room. But I also help assemble the monthly brochure, which means writing short descriptions of films in under eighty words. Doing this well is harder than it looks. I have learned to describe a slow, difficult film so that people who might enjoy it are drawn in, without overselling it to those who will not.

For the past eighteen months I have also volunteered on Saturdays at a small artist-run space, mostly invigilating. Sitting with an exhibition for six hours shows you things a private view never will: which piece people walk past, where they hesitate, which wall text they actually read. During a show of textile and sound work, I noticed visitors rarely found the headphones tucked behind a hanging piece. I mentioned this to the organisers, who moved them and added a small floor label. It was a minor change, but it made me think about curating as a series of practical decisions about bodies, light and attention. I also helped install two shows, which mainly involved spirit levels, patching walls and carrying plinths.

Away from work, I spend Wednesday afternoons with my grandmother, who lives alone, doing her shopping and sorting post. She has a drawer of photographs she likes to rearrange and tell stories about, and I have become quietly fascinated by how the order changes the story. I also swim most mornings, which has little to do with art but keeps the rest of my week in proportion.

My reading so far has been that of an informed newcomer. Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube made me reconsider the supposedly neutral gallery, and Claire Bishop's Artificial Hells sharpened my questions about participatory art and who it serves. I want to test these ideas against practice rather than simply agree with them.

Postgraduate study would give me what my current roles cannot: sustained critical training, contact with contemporary artists, and the chance to develop a project from research through to public presentation. I am particularly interested in exhibiting moving image outside cinema conditions, and in how small organisations sustain audiences. I bring reliability, practical experience of how spaces and screenings actually run, and a habit of watching how people respond. I would like to learn how to turn those observations into thoughtful curatorial work.