Jes Fernie is an independent curator, lecturer and writer. She works with galleries, visual arts organisations, universities and artists to make exhibitions, public artworks, residency projects and public programmes across the UK and abroad.
She is interested in ways that artworks are viewed, positioned, and transformed by a live relationship with audiences, contexts and conditions. In 2021 she launched the Archive of Destruction, an international research project that brings together narratives around public sculpture that has been destroyed by rage, boredom, fear, greed and love. Through exhibition-making, publications and lectures, she is currently looking into the subject of failure, things undone and vulnerability in contemporary art practice.
In 2023, she curated a major contemporary sculpture exhibition at MK Gallery, involving artists based in the UK. She is a lecturer at Central Saint Martins in London, and visiting lecturer at universities including the Royal College of Arts, Royal Academy Schools, the Slade and Goldsmiths, University of London.
She writes and lectures extensively and has worked with a broad range of organisations including Tate, PEER, Serpentine Gallery, Turf Projects, Ikon Gallery, Manchester International Festival, Flat Time House, MK Gallery, Firstsite, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, and Lund Cathedral. She is a Board member of Matt’s Gallery.
