Hugo Roelandt —ARCHIVE

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ARCHIVAL METHODOLOGY

For Hugo Roelandt, photography and video documentation were primarily a means of capturing a constantly changing reality. For him, what happened in front of the camera was the most important. His unique approach to documentation as an unedited record of reality shaped his art both formally and conceptually. As early as the 1970s, performance artists could consider the documenting of a performance as an artwork in its own right. Yet for Roelandt, the event itself was more important than its documentary trace. It is likely that he never revisited or edited many of the recordings. The artist’s intention was never to define the boundaries between the artwork and its documentation.

ESTATE HUGO ROELANDT 

Hugo Roelandt donated part of his legacy to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where he taught photography. Both the Academy and his partner, Lydia Van Loock, decided to preserve the artist’s archive in its entirety as a research platform and donate it to the M HKA. The museum applies its knowledge and expertise to conserve and document the artist’s archive, making it accessible to contemporary artists, students, researchers, and the general public. 
 

In 2016, Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, under the directorship of Antony Hudek, took the first step by inviting the journalist and critic Marc Holthof to curate two exhibitions dedicated to Roelandt’s oeuvre. Coinciding with the exhibitions, the first monograph devoted to Hugo Roelandt, edited by Marc Holthof, was published by Occasional Papers. 
 

The following activities took place as part of the Hugo Roelandt Research Project:

Objectif Exhibitions hosted two exhibitions on Hugo Roelandt, curated by Marc Holthof (16.04–04.06 / 16.06–30.07).

Netwerk, Aalst organised an exhibition on Hugo Roelandt, curated by Roger D’Hondt (23.04–18.06).

M HKA organised two sequential small archival exhibitions devoted to the Antwerp alternative space Montevideo, which Hugo Roelandt co-founded in 1981 (the first 16.06–10.7; the second 14.07–07.08).