The fifth of this annual series, ArtChat this year featured a line-up of established and emerging independent curators who are all working within contemporary practice. The evening explored imaginative ideas in a fast-paced, invigorating and sometimes humorous format, providing a snapshot of the exciting curatorial projects proposed by today’s creative thinkers.
Kelly Doley is an artist and curator based in Sydney. Her practice aims to create new dialogues for feminist and political art practices while supporting Australian artists to have sustainable careers. She has ten years-experience in the fields of visual arts, specialising in feminist and performance art as well as arts strategy, management and advocacy working across government, education, and the independent arts sector. She is the founder and co-Director of performance collaboration Barbara Cleveland and is currently working at Create NSW in Sector Investment. Her current project Feminist South is a curatorial project focussed on feminist practice in the Asia Pacific region.
Ineke Dane is an Australian curator, artist and researcher who applies an interdisciplinary approach to her practice. She has travelled extensively, working and researching across the fields of art, law and journalism.
Since 2015 Ineke has worked with Kaldor Public Art Projects in Sydney as Curatorial Assistant and Archivist. In 2014 Ineke co-curated Enduring Parallels: an exhibition of performance art with artist Lottie Consalvo at The Lock-Up, Newcastle. In 2016 she curated a group exhibition for Lake Macquarie Gallery titled Watching Clouds Pass the Moon. Earlier this year Ineke again worked with The Lock-Up for the exhibition Know your neighbour. She has supported artists through numerous commissions in curated exhibitions whose themes reflect the perplexities of our time.
Denise Thwaites is a curator, writer and researcher. Her practice interlaces theory-driven, community-engaged and cross-cultural programming, with more recent forays into the field of critico-fiction.
Since completing her PhD in Aesthetics through the University of New South Wales, Sydney and l’Université Paris VIII, Vincennes – Saint-Denis, she has produced a number of contemporary art projects including: Singular/Plural (2017), as part of the New Beginnings Refugee Arts and Culture Festival at 107 Projects, The Fraud Complex (2016) at West Space, as part of Next Wave Festival, Melbourne; Shaun Gladwell’s Self Portrait as a Semiotext(e) Foreign Agent (2015) at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney; and Possible Futures (2013), the 11th iteration of the Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium, as part of This Is Not Art, Newcastle. She has held positions at the University of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the National Art School, Sydney, the Australia Council for the Arts and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
Her writing on contemporary art has been published by Das Superpaper, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Edinburgh University Press and the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, having presented her research at conferences in England, France, Taiwan and Australia.
Anna May Kirk is an emerging curator, artist, organiser and writer based in Sydney. Currently working with Underbelly Arts, Kirk is the founder of After pARTY, part of the Art & Culture team at FBi Radio, and until recently the Directing Curator of Down / Under Space. Prior to these, Anna May has held roles at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Alaska Projects, UNSW Art & Design and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Her artistic and curatorial projects have been presented at Artbank, Museum of Contemporary Art, CCAS, Kudos Gallery, BAD festival, In Motion Festival and Desire Lines, amongst other galleries, alternate spaces and events.
Luke Letourneau is a writer and curator working in Sydney. He has curated exhibitions at Gaffa Gallery, UNSW Galleries, Firstdraft, Seventh Gallery, ARCHIVE_, 107 Projects and Kudos Gallery. In 2015 he curated an exhibition at Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, as part of the Emerging Curator Program supported by the Yarra City Council. In 2015 he became the inaugural recipient of the Freedman Foundation Curatorial Scholarship under the UNSW Art & Design Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership program.
Luke is the coordinator of Kudos Gallery at the University of New South Wales. In 2017 Luke joined the management and editorial board of Runway Australian experimental art journal and will be co-editing issue #34 [Failure] with Sarinah Masukor and Talia Smith.
