URGENCY & POLITICS OF ARCHIVING, COLLECTING AND CURATING
SAN LDN hosted an online Discuss & Exchange session with invited guest speakers open to everyone interested in the intersection between art & society.
WEDNESDAY 17TH JUNE, 6PM
Urgency & Politics of Archiving, Collecting and Curating
Artists across the country are working at the forefront of community action, producing radical sites of social care and justice. We spend energy in activating spaces and places through creative interventions that can be participatory and meaningful. How much of the time devoted to a project do we spend on it’s after-care? How do we choose to document and archive and where do we share that material when the work is completed?
Building an archive and legacy of socially engaged work will be central to this meetup’s discussion, with perspectives from Lucy Wright (artist-researcher) sharing Axisweb’s new initiative to create a Social Art Library, Domenico Sergi’s (Curator) inclusive collecting strategies around the Curating London initiative of the Museum of London, George Vasey (Curator) discussing curating archives for Wellcome Collection and R.M. Sánchez-Camus premiering a new digital social exchange platform called the Social ARTery.
Guest Biographies
Lucy Wright, Artist and Researcher, Axisweb
I am an artist and researcher currently working as Research and Development Coordinator for Axisweb, an arts charity that supports and promotes the interests of artists. Recent projects have included ‘Models of Validation’ / ‘Social Works?’ and ‘Validation Beyond the Gallery’, in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, which were both concerned with better understanding the needs of social arts practitioners. Also working as a social artist, I’ve undertaken recent commissions for the National Trust, Jersey Heritage and Daiwa Foundation. In addition, I am also a Research Fellow at University of Leeds, working on the AHRC project, ‘FailSpace’ which looks at policy failures in relation to cultural participation projects.
Domenico Sergi, Senior Curator (Curating London) Museum of London
Dom is Senior Curator for contemporary collecting at the Museum of London, where he leads a team of curators and researchers developing collaborative approaches to curatorial practice. He worked as Anthropology Curator & Community Engagement Coordinator at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and as a Lecturer at UCL. He graduated in Sociology at University of Rome (2004), undertook his MA in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2008) and received his doctorate in Anthropology and Museum Studies at UEA (2016) with a thesis exploring refugee mobilities and the materialities of exile. A monograph on the subject will be published by Routledge in the Spring of 2021.
George Vasey, Curator Wellcome Collection
George is a curator at Wellcome Collection and writer. He recently co-curated Jo Spence & Oreet Ashery: Misbehaving Bodies at Wellcome Collection (2019-20) and has previously curated projects across the UK for public and commercial galleries. He was co-curator of Turner Prize, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2017), curator at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2014-17) and was a Curatorial Fellow at Newcastle University (2017-18). His writing has been published in Art Monthly, Burlington Contemporary, Frieze and Mousse magazine and he regularly teaches at universities across the UK on fine art and curatorial courses. He is a trustee at New Contemporaries and Tees Valley Arts.
Hosted by R.M. Sánchez-Camus
Coordinator: Daniela Liberati
Timetable:
17:45 Zoom open to registered participants
18:00 Greetings, guidelines and introductions
18:15 Presentations & Q&A (Live on YouTube*)
19:00 Discuss & Exchange (smaller groups / breakout rooms)
19:25 Group feedback
19:45 Closing
*Only the presentations will be broadcast, the Discuss & Exchange session