Mat Bancroft by Jill Furmanovsky
Meet the Curator: Mat Bancroft
Meet the Curator is MAG_BTMMusic Archive Gallery: Beyond The Music ‘s Q&A giving floor to curators across the globe who have been involved in the curation of exhibitions related to music culture. Answering a short set of questions, interviewees talk about their professional practice and share insight into their work as well as their view of exhibitions into the future.
Today’s guest is Manchester’s British Pop Archive curator Mat Bancroft.
That’s really my aim for exhibitions I’m involved with – to elevate pop culture and music culture to the level of other arts, such as fine art, opera and ballet. Not that I don’t think they’re just as important, but I think ‘pop’ is probably more important to more people.
Mat Bancroft – British Pop Archive curator
1. How did you become a curator and what were the first exhibitions you curated/worked on?
I come from an arts curatorial background rather than an archival background. I did a graphic design degree in the late nineties because I wanted to be a designer. Then, in my mid-thirties, I decided that I was going to go back and retrain to become a curator. I started as a volunteer and then assistant, working with the fine art curators in Manchester Art Gallery.
I worked on various projects, ranging from Japanese design to small fine art shows with contemporary artists and assisted on the curation of the Vogue 100 show which moved from the National Portrait Gallery. Then I moved on to working with Matthew Higgs and Jon Savage on the True Faith exhibition, which was a combination of a fine art show and a memorabilia and ephemera show. It looked at the impact of both Joy Division and New Order and their artistic legacy.
More recently I worked as a consultant with Jon Savage for the exhibition Use Hearing Protection curated by Jan Hicks at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, which explored the early days of Factory Records. Before that, Jon Savage and I also curated another Factory exhibition at Chelsea Space in London, titled Use Hearing Protection FAC 1-50/40 which was the precursor to SIM’s exhibition.
Mat Bancroft by Jill Furmanovsky
2. What is your role now?
I am now curator of the British Pop Archive and am working a lot with archives in an operational way as the day-to-day curator of the BPA. I talk to people who have archives, manage the materials coming in and curate the archive’s exhibitions. I am still learning different elements of the job as it’s got its differences compared to being an exhibitions curator, but it’s a dream come true position for me!
Anti-Nazi League poster, designed by David King, 1978, Courtesy of The University of Manchester from Rob Gretton’s Archive, part of the BPA Collection
4. During the Covid-19 pandemic, lots of institutions moved towards digital exhibitions in various formats, ranging from web page based online exhibitions to 3D environments fully recreated with gaming engines. What do you think about virtual exhibitions?
I think it’s an interesting angle that certainly allows you to reach a much wider audience than a physical exhibition for obvious reasons. It made complete sense during the pandemic and was an opportunity to at least engage people and keep a conversation going.
I think it will be important for audience engagement in the future even though I don’t think it will ever take over the physical experience. However those who curate visual exhibitions of any kind have to start to think about the digital side, not only with regards to web presence but about the differences between physically or virtually experiencing things in the most complete way possible I guess.
5. Have you ever worked with immersive technologies when curating physical exhibitions?
With our current exhibition Collection – Launching the British Pop Archive including digital wasn’t possible. Everything is displayed in cases within a listed building. That’s the environment we have to work with currently, but we created an audio experience to give a sense of atmosphere. The type of installation and material within this exhibition doesn’t immediately lend itself to an immersive experience.
As we develop this project though, more immersive displays will certainly be something that we think about as a way of allowing people to engage with the materials contained in the archives. Because they are so contemporary and so varied, I know that the BPA will have many conversations around the different ways of displaying materials.
Collection – Launching the British Pop Archive at The John Rylands Research Institute and library, photograph by Jo Castle, Courtesy of The University of Manchester
6. Is curating music or pop culture related exhibitions different from curating any other kind of exhibition in your experience?
In one sense no, it’s just the materials that change. You still think about what story it is you want to try and put forward and what questions you want to ask. What is the layout and what is the journey through the exhibition? How do the materials connect with each other and are there visually strong points in the exhibition? What is the item that grabs the attention of the visitors as soon as they walk in? I don’t know if there’s that many differences when you’re thinking about it from a pop culture sense, I guess you’re still just thinking about the same things.
7. What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given when starting your career as a curator?
One of the great bits of advice that I got from one of the curators at Manchester Art Gallery was that the job was to ask questions and not answer them, which was really helpful because, when I started, I was doing it completely wrong! I was thinking my job was to propose a question and answer it, all at the same time. And actually, when you shed yourself of that pressure, it’s much easier because what you’re doing is just putting forward points, ideas and connections, and hopefully letting the audience come to the decision themselves. It is irrelevant in a sense whether they ‘like’ the exhibition or not, it’s got nothing to do with it. It’s to do with showing people how materials link together, and hopefully help them understand why we put them together.
8. What would be your top tips to a young curator?
Well, I came to curation quite late, in one sense… So, I guess one bit of advice is that it’s never too late to do what you think you actually want to do and should be doing. And then, the best bit of advice I have is just go and get involved in whatever it is that you want to do, however you can.
When I started assisting Manchester Art Gallery’s curators they engaged me and trusted me with projects, and they taught me really well. At the same time, I did a Masters in curating and got a sort of “more formal” re-education in curating. So, definitely, go get work experience if you can and throw yourself into it!
9. Musically speaking, what is the most memorable exhibition that you have been to?
There was an exhibition on display at Tate Liverpool in 2013, which was called – Glam! The Performance of Style and I thought it was brilliant. It was specifically about glam rock, but it was about glam’s impact on pop culture. Its date range was probably from about the mid to late sixties through just about the early eighties.
I guess the reason it’s my favorite is because I felt it was exactly the kind of exhibition that I would love to do. It brought together fine art, video, costume, ephemera, record sleeves, posters, etcetera, all under this singular title.
Glam – The Performance of Style Tate Liverpool banner screenshot; via Tate Liverpool
It managed to show you the wider impact of other cultural movements on all forms of art. As I consider design and anything that comes out of a pop, cultural or musical movement to be very important, it was nice to see these items elevated and sitting next to works of fine art. The more disposable elements of pop culture, because they tend to be viewed as being “juvenile”, are often treated as things that we just passed through.
That’s really my aim for exhibitions I’m involved with – to elevate pop culture and music culture to the level of other arts, such as fine art, opera and ballet. Not that I don’t think they’re just as important, but I think ‘pop’ is probably more important to more people.