Producing & Curating

I have been invited to be one of the Creative Directors of the Official Italian Virtual Pavilion. City X, curated by Tom Kovac, RMIT University and @Alessandro Melis Portsmouth University titled CITYX Venice responds to ‘How will we live together’ curated by Hashim Sarkis MIT, organized by La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition opens Saturday 22 May at 10.00 am CET. @CityXVenice #italianvirtualpavillion #ivp2021

In the Covid era, place has become virtual and immediately local. So I have made and adapted Science Gallery Venice's Earth Water Sky environmental arts and science two month residency as a hybrid. It is both a virtual and physical residency, with  one month digital, one month physical (when conditions allow) with the public being able to track and contribute to the process of artistic research by the second artist in residence, Haseeb Ahmed, who's investigating the wind, on his special website which is updated weekly.

Earth Water Sky at Science Gallery Venice is fully funded by Didier and Martine Primat Foundation

The Nordic Photography Triennale, Backlight2020 went ahead despite COVID September 4 – November 8, 2020 in Tampere, Finland. In addition to exhibitions, screenings and installations, the festival features lectures and seminars on photography, science and new technologies, as well as portfolio reviews.

I am one of the curators, together with the Finnish artist Maija Tammi, photography curator Lars Willumeit, and Director of Backlight Hannu Vanhane.

We have sifted through thousands of photographs in the past 8 months and selected 23 international artists on the theme of Related Realities. We also published a catalogue too. Go to Writing for my essay about Physics, Photography, Einstein and Light

Related Realities exhibition opened at the Gallery Himmelblau, Tampere, Finland on 5.9. – 31.10.2020

Emotions are the core of human experience. The international group exhibition Real Feelings opening at HeK, Basel, Switzerland August 26th 2020 explores the rapidly changing relationship between technology and emotions.  For over a year, I have been working with Sabine Himmelsbach Director of HeK and Angelique Spaninks, Director of MU, to create this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue. The works of the 20 artists presented in the exhibition enquire and show how technology today represents, manipulates and changes our emotions.

Artists: Antoine Catala (FR), Stine Deja & Marie Munk (DK), Heather Dewey-Hagborg (US), Justine Emard (FR), Cécile B. Evans (UK), Ed Fornieles (UK), Maria Guta & Adrian Ganea (CH/RO), Esther Hunziker (CH), Seokyung Kim (KR), Clément Lambelet (CH), Lorem (IT), Kyle McDonald & Lauren McCarthy (US), Simone C. Niquille (CH), Dani Ploeger (NL), Lucy McRae (AU), Shinseungback Kimyonghun (KR), Maija Tammi (FI), Troika (UK), Coralie Vogelaar (NL), Liam Young (AU)

Curators: Sabine Himmelsbach, Ariane Koek und Angelique Spaninks

This June one of the world's underwater artists, Emma Critchley, began her 2 month Earth Water Sky residency which I created for Science Gallery Venice and for which I secured 3 years from the Swiss based Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. Emma is working with one of Italy's leading environmental scientists, Professor Carlo Barbante, who is based at Ca Foscari University and is one of the leaders of the Ice Memory Project - an extraordinary project to create a library of non-polar ice cores which record the changes in climate  and which will be stored in Antarctica.

The bubbles of gas stored in the cores give clues as to how the climate has changed. Tiny particles organic materials stored in the ice core can give clues also to people's movements across time and space - across continents and the centuries - prooving also that migration and movement are facts of life.

Emma's residency continues in September and October and as Curator, I am there, making connections with her for research, ideas and production development, including beginning to set up future tours. At the end of the residency Emma will bid for the 26,000 Euro production grant to make the art work inspired by her time with Professor Barbante. It will be exhibited during the Venice Biennale in 2020.

Black holes, dark matter, gravity, space, time and motion - these are phenomena that fascinate scientists and artists alike. The exhibition Entangle — Physics and the Artistic Imagination at Bildmuseet, Umea Sweden features 14 international artists who use physics as jumping off points of their imaginations.

The artists include Iris van Herpen, Julius von Bismarck, Goshka Macuga, Ryoji Ikeda, Sarah Sze, Davide Quayola, Julien Charriere and Keith Tyson, with two new commissions.

The exhibition presents painting, installation, fashion, architecture, sculpture, film, digital artwork and photography that are inspired by the science which reveals the fundamental forces that shape our world.

I initiated Primal Sonic Visions by the internationally acclaimed artist Bill Fontana coming to the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. To do this, I brokered the new relationships, including the funding, exhibition space, and production between IRENA (the International Renewable Energy Agency who originally commissioned the work) Ca Foscari University of Venice, Science Gallery Venice, the Italian production company Arthemisia and the artist.  

The exhibition shows the beauty and power of nature and renewable energy sources  through sound and vision captured by Bill Fontana. It was first shown in Abu Dhabi, UAE January 2018. 

The moment I heard the sounds under the iconic Ponte 25 d'Abril bridge in Lisbon, I rang up the international artist Bill Fontana and said he had to make a piece based on it. I then made it happen — working on the budget and pitch, introducing him to MAAT director Pedro Gadhano.

Bill Fontana considers this his masterwork. 

I wrote about Primal Sonic Visions for the exhibition here

http://resoundings.org/PDF/On_the_Edge_of_Vision.pdf

Bill Fontana considers Shadow Soundings his masterwork.