Jo’burg art picks: August 27 2010

Ever wanted to look inside a curator’s head?

• Ever wondered who pays for the artworks hanging in major international art museums? Or how long it takes to reconstruct a dinosaur skeleton from scratch? Ask A Curator Day, an international online event taking place on September 1, is an opportunity to have these and other museum-related questions answered. And all you need is an internet connection and a Twitter account. Initiated by Sumo, a British company specialising in heritage marketing, Ask A Curator Day uses the social networking website Twitter to offer the public a direct line to the curators of participating museums. Either by using the Twitter hashtag ‘#askacurator”, or by addressing specific museums via the Ask A Curator website (www.askacurator.com), Twitter users can ask curators general or specific questions and expect answers. Because this is a one-day event, rather than an ongoing service, curators will only be fielding questions on September 1. See www.askacurator.com for participating museums and for more information.

• In the realm of the tangible, there is only one more week to see O (Yuen), an exhibition of jewellery and photography produced collaboratively by jewellery designer Angela Yeung and photographer Rob Mills. In this exhibition, Yeung uses pearls to create pieces that respond to imagery in a collection of prints by Mills. The medium of pearl has symbolic significance in this body of work. Yeung explains, ‘Chinese mythology has extensive references to the pearl as symbol of healing, associated with rites of passage, magical transformation and completion.”Mills adds: ‘The images are deliberately ambiguous, allowing one to attach ones’ own meaning, exploring a somewhat mythological space; an inner world juxtaposing ecstasy, tragedy, pain and transcendence.” O shows at the Artspace gallery until September 4. Artspace is at 1 Chester Court, 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood. Tel: 011 880 8802.