Lauren Craig
Artist, Researcher and Co-Curator
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021, South London Gallery, until 20 February 2022
Craig’s work HerStory (2002-ongoing) is an auto-ethnographic photographic collage. Using collage, she refers to the conceptual and making process that layers her archival photographs, deep time and space with plant materials and biodegradable foam and wood. The overall effect is minimal and sculptural but if you accept its invitation, it’s a floral installation. Visit the Bloomberg New Contemporaries website for more information.
S:E:P:A:L:S: An Intersectional Approach to Care and Safety
Following a half-day event 11 December 2021, hosted by the S:E:P:A:L:S: group and the British Art Network, the new year will bring a digital garden project and future publication. S:E:P:A:L:S: aims to generate a focused understanding of how we can use care and safety in more diverse ways within curating, institutional decision making, commissioning and education. More information via this link.
Janet Couloute
Art Historian and Co-Lead of African Heritage Tours, Tate Galleries
Currently working on a temporary basis at Tate Britain, Couloute is establishing African Heritage Tours at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. She is also responsible for co-ordinating the recruitment of Black guides to both deliver the tours and to offer Afro-centric perspectives to the permanent collection. To register your interest in becoming a guide please contact [email protected]
Clare Gormley
Curator and Co-Lead of the BAN Northern Irish Art Research Group
Call for Papers: Northern Ireland’s Feminist and Queer Art Histories
Online Conference, 21 January 2022
How has feminist and queer visual culture challenged Northern Irish society since 1968? Organised by Clare Gormley and Anne Liesching of the BAN Northern Irish Art Network in collaboration with Edwin Coomasaru and Rachel Warriner of the Courtauld’s Gender & Sexuality Research Group.
Contributions invited that examine work created by artists working in the North of Ireland and Northern Irish artists, and exhibitions, publications and material culture during the late twentieth century and up to the present day, that relate to gender and sexuality. More information is available via the Courtauld website.
Lisa Kennedy
Researcher and Writer
Current Projects
Kennedy is currently writing guidance on how to address problematic language within archives for a group of heritage organisations in Bath. She is working on a report for the Decolonising Arts Institute, University of the Arts London focusing on anti-racist curatorial approaches, in response to their ‘Doing the Work’ programme with the Contemporary Arts Society. Finally, Kennedy is developing digital learning content for St Albans Cathedral, connecting artwork and the architecture of the cathedral to the GCSE Art and Design curriculum.
Marta Marsicka
Curator and Artist Development Coordinator, BACKLIT
Developing Your Creative Practice Grant
Marta is a successful awardee of 11th round of Arts Council’s Developing Your Creative Practice grant, through which she will conduct curatorial research about working-class migrant artists in the UK. Marta will be investigating the common ground of migrant and working-class identities, which consists of notions of belonging, lack of support, limited opportunities, liminality and in-betweenness and constant questioning of one’s own identity.
BACKLIT Gallery
Marta has also started a new job as Artist Development Coordinator at BACKLIT Gallery in Nottingham, where she works with studio holders and associates on development opportunities for artists
Sam Metz
Artist and Co-ordinator
Drawing as Stimming
Metz’s project Drawing as Stimming is now supported by a research grant from Necessity. Metz’s work looks to legitimize non-verbal communication such as stimming and to find a place for it within art making and art interpretation. Drawing as Stimming looks to create a time where stimming can happen, through drawing and in response to artworks in the gallery setting, or online in response to art collections. A wider outcome of the work is the aim of expanding what research is and what it looks like, and in particular what neurodivergent led research in the context of art and art history might look like. More information via the Necessity website.
A Space to Be
Scarborough Art Gallery, launching February 2022
Metz is coordinating this community space project which aims to provide a warm welcome to visitors and community groups at Scarborough Art Gallery. Metz is supporting Scarborough Museums Trust to become a more democratic, inclusive and relevant space for everyone.
Unlimited Commission and Exhibition
In May 2021, Metz was awarded an Unlimited Emerging Artist commission for which they created Making Solid: unpredictable bodies. The project works with movement made solid, poeticising the fleeting interruptions of the disabled body through the creation of lasting documentations. The work which interrogates how a disabled body’s very presence transgresses societal restrictions was exhibited 4–5 December 2021 in Leeds. More information via the Unlimited website.
Siobhan McLaughlin
Artist and Curator
Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World, Dovecot Studios, dates to be announced
This upcoming exhibition celebrates the centenary of Scottish artist Alan Davie (1920- 2014). Consisting of paintings, prints and tapestries from each decade between his leaving Edinburgh College of Art to drawings made just prior to his death, the exhibition demonstrates the wide range of talent across Davie’s life. Graduating from ECA nearly 80 years after Davie, this exhibition is curated by emerging artist Siobhan McLaughlin, who aims to open up private collections otherwise inaccessible to the public. More information can be found on the Dovecot Studios website.
The Gilchrist Fisher Award 2022
McLaughlin is one of six shortlisted artists who will exhibit at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London in March 2022. The Gilchrist Fisher Award was established in 1987 in memory and celebration of Alasdair Gilchrist-Fisher and is a biennial prize open to all artists under the age of 30 whose work explores the broad theme of Landscape.
Prerona Prasad
Curator, Heong Gallery
Lucy Van Pelt: Director of Everything
Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge, to 6 February 2022
This exhibition brings together original strips, objects, and much more from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center to tell the story of everyone’s favourite eight-year-old feminist icon from Peanuts. More information via the Downing College website.
Lorna Rose, Curator
Spaces to Speak, opening 2022
This Arts Council funded project is curated in collaboration with Ella S. Mills. The project will commission artist Lauren Craig to produce a site-specific audio installation, in response to the recorded experiences of Black/Brown creatives in Plymouth.