Producing & Curating

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.

My latest project is Earth Water Sky — the new 3 year  annual artists residency programme which I created for Science Gallery Venice, launched October 29th 2018.  I fundraised for the project entirely myself and secured 270,000 Euros for 3 years.

The programme is generously funded for 3 years by Fondation Didier et Martin Primat — the swiss foundation dedicated to the environment and well-being.

This annual programme is for an artist to come fully funded to Venice to work for two months with cutting edge environmental scientists from Ca Foscari University of Venice and the Veneto region. The programme includes in addition 5000 Euro monthly stipend and the opportunity to bid for 26,000 Euros in production money to create a new work.

In the first year, the artist id attached to scientists in Venice working specifically on the Ice Memory project, including Professor Carlo Barbante and his team. This project is dedicated to creating a global library of ice from the world's endangered non-polar region glaciers to be stored in Antarctica. 

I am the designated curator of the programme.

The winner of the first Earth Water Sky residency was announced February 2019. 

She is the underwater artist Emma Critchley and will take up her residency in June this year.

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.