'Navigation Pacifica 2013': Community as subject

Curating art and community has long been a challenging task. Over the last decade, divisive curatorial arguments for process over presentation or presentation over process have evolved to converge, with 'C3West' in Greater Sydney and 'spaced' in remote Western Australia being successful Australian examples. Another quandary regarding community engagement is whether to approach communities from the perspective of protagonists or as subjects in the production and consumption of the creative outcomes. International exhibitions also raise a recurring difficulty for curators in how best to present the local diaspora within the global, as many local curators are measured on outward-looking projects with international perspectives. This provides opportunities for local stories to be contextualised globally and for curators to regard the complex social and cultural world with an elevated political consciousness.