James Moss is a freelance artist-curator focused on diversifying heritage audiences through contemporary art and performance. Recent roles include Curator of Contemporary Art at The Lowry (Arts Council England NPO), and Exhibitions & Programmes Curator for The Portico Library, a Regency-era arts and heritage charity in central Manchester. He has acted as consultant on projects for Festival of the Mind and The World Reimagined, delivering public installations and learning resources across seven UK cities on the history of enslavement and its legacies (founding artist Yinka Shonibare).
Themes of particular interest include time, potential, work, and waste; absence and erasure; alternative histories, and the frailties of language—when words can’t, or mustn’t, be enough. Recent collaborators include Maria Nepomuceno, Nikta Mohammadi, Jo Lathwood, Lindsey Mendick, Rene Kulitja, Helen Idle, and Robel Temesgen. James has given talks and tours for V&A Young Curators, HOME, Culture&, Contact Young Company, and the Working Class Movement Library. He has exhibited and performed with the BBC (UK), ARTE (Germany), TF1 (France), Bluedot, Cité de la Mode et du Design, Koko London, Festival Number 6, Fuse Art Space, and St John on Bethnal Green. Publications include Feint (artist monograph), Cut Cloth: Contemporary Textiles & Feminism, and Made in Translation, with Alice Kettle and the Crafts Research Group. Formerly a Castlefield Gallery Associate artist and Hoxton Art Projects Associate. Artist residency at ArtWork Atelier, Salford, 2015.
