Yuhan Gao – MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) – School of Fine Art

Yuhan Gao is a curator trained in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at The Glasgow School of Art. Her practice begins with concepts embedded in everyday life and public discourse, particularly those whose meanings appear familiar, self-evident or culturally established. Through curatorial research, she examines how these meanings are constructed, circulated and sustained, and how they shift across different social and material contexts.

Gao is interested in translating this research into exhibition structures in which ideas can be encountered through material, spatial and temporal experience. Her approach considers display, participation, movement and transformation as active curatorial methods, allowing meaning to develop through the relationships between artworks, environments and audiences.

Across her practice, exhibition-making functions as a form of critical enquiry. She uses curatorial processes to unsettle established ways of seeing and understanding, creating conditions in which familiar concepts can be reconsidered through direct encounter and experience.

Best Before is a participatory curatorial event exploring how freshness is constructed through display, materiality, participation and consumption. The project approaches freshness as a quality produced through specific conditions of presentation and experience, examining how visual presentation, material conditions and context shape perceptions of what appears fresh, desirable and ready for consumption.

The project develops through three interconnected stages: Plating, Slicing and Tasting. Plating focuses on the construction of freshness through presentation and display. Slicing introduces physical intervention, allowing carefully composed images and materials to be altered and fragmented. Tasting brings audiences directly into this process through participation and consumption, allowing freshness to shift, deteriorate and eventually become exhausted over time.

During the event, edible reproductions of selected artworks and images were placed onto cakes and presented alongside works displayed on the wall. As audiences cut, moved and consumed the cakes, the edible images gradually fragmented and disappeared. The changing material state of the cakes made the instability of freshness physically visible, while the relationship between edible images and wall-based works connected different conditions of display, material transformation and consumption.

The event brings together works by Elizabeth Riddell, Claudine O’Sullivan, Eva M.V. Hewitt, Kate Glenn and Josie Williams.

Works presented on cakes

Elizabeth Riddell
Buy a Lemon, Digital Photograph
Soft Serve, Digital Photograph
Empire Biscuit (Greggs), Digital Photograph

Claudine O’Sullivan
Before Consumption, 2026, Digital Photograph

Eva M.V. Hewitt
Tally’s Blood, 2026, Oil and wax on canvas
Burrata, 2025, Watercolour and pen on cartridge paper
Vino Rosso, 2025, Watercolour and pen on cartridge paper
Churros and Bull Horns, 2024, Pen, watercolour and napkin on sketchbook pages
Cafe Prado, 2024, Pen and sugar packet on sketchbook pages

Kate Glenn
Consensual Jouissance, 2026, Photography on iPhone 12

Josie Williams
Après moi, le déluge, 2023, Etching with red chine-collé on paper

Works displayed on the wall

Elizabeth Riddell
DADA, 2026, 5 no. Iceland carrier bags

Claudine O’Sullivan
Holding I, 2026, Acrylic on panel
Holding II, 2026, Acrylic on panel

Eva M.V. Hewitt
Tally’s Blood, 2026, Oil and wax on canvas
Burrata, 2025, Watercolour and pen on cartridge paper
Vino Rosso, 2025, Watercolour and pen on cartridge paper

Kate Glenn
Consensual Jouissance, 2026, Photography on iPhone 12

Josie Williams
Après moi, le déluge, 2023, Etching with red chine-collé on paper

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