The Search for Place

The Academy of Fine Arts graduate exhibition can be seen from many different angles: a member of the public (for whom the exhibition will be open ten days) will see it differently than a graduate, for whom it is the culmination of usually six years of study. The exhibition’s significance within the annual rhythm of our school is different than its meaning within the context of its more than two-hundred-year history. Those of us associated with the school (students as well as teachers) are accustomed to seeing the graduate exhibition as something traditional and unchanging – a fixture in the life of the Academy and even the Czech cultural scene. But reality is somewhat more prosaic, brief, and mutable.

The origins of the Academy’s public graduate exhibition date back to the 1980s. The first time such an exhibition was held outside the school grounds was in 1992 at Troja Chateau. In 1997, it was shown at Strahov Monastery, in 1999 at the Carolinum and a year later at the Palace of Industry at Prague’s fairgrounds. In 2004, the graduate exhibition was held at the Academy’s recently renovated Modern Gallery, and in 2007 it was shown in the studios inside the Main Building. In 1998, the graduate exhibition was first held at the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace, where it has returned sixteen times since. 1998 was also the first year a catalogue was published to go with the exhibition. New additions this year are a website and a Graduation Festival.

The decision to hold the graduate exhibition at the Academy’s buildings is thus hardly a dramatic event in its short history. But our motivation is new. Milena Slavická and Jitka Svobodová, who curated the last graduate exhibition to be held on the school’s grounds (2007), based their decision on a lack of financing and insufficient public interest in art. More than ten years later, the decision was a conscious one. The introductions written for the previous twenty AVU graduation catalogues often talk about sending our fresh graduates out into the world. The graduate exhibition is often described as a symbolic transition from the friendly and protected environment of the school into the real and sufficiently harsh world. But this quite natural way of thinking can also give the impression that studying at an art school takes place somehow outside of reality. For this reason, we have decided to bring the world into the school, to show it what we make here and how we make it. This requires some uncomfortable changes and more than a little effort, but it is an opportunity to look at the school and ourselves differently. Reality isn’t something that awaits us only as adults and that we can only properly engage with if we have a diploma in our pocket. The impressive site-specific environment of the Academy of Fine Arts is merely a pleasant bonus for this engagement.