Spring/Summer 2010

14 - 15 May 2010
Sydney

ICF is a Public Program Partner of the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Opening Week Forum. Framed within a lens that acknowledges and consults the field of Comparative Aesthetics, the Forum will bring together a cross-disciplinary community of practitioners and theorists to critically consider within panel discussions, roundtable events and presentations the external forces and hierarchies that affect and structure our perceptions of art.

ICF representatives in these debates include: David A. Bailey, Amareswar Galla, Leah Gordon, Teka Selman and Allison Thompson.

David A. Bailey MBE is the founding Director of the International Curators Forum and Acting Director of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Bailey has established an international reputation, commitment and investment in a variety of issues on the themes of history, race and representation over the past twenty years. Past exhibitions and projects include: The Critical Decade: Black British Photography, MIRAGE: Enigmas, On Race, Difference & Desire, Rhapsodies In Black: Art From the Harlem Renaissance, Back To Black, Shades Of Black, Veil, Remember Saro-Wiwa: The Living Memorial, Black Moving Cube, and in development The Red Shoes.
Allison Thompson is currently director of the Division of Visual and Performing Art, and coordinator for the Bachelor of Fine Arts Programme in Studio Art at the Barbados Community College where she has been teaching art history and critical theory since 1986. Thompson has written numerous articles and catalogue essays on Caribbean art and is the co-author, along with Alissandra Cummins and Nick Whittle, of the book, Art in Barbados: What kind of mirror image. Current research projects include contributions to books on Agostino Brunias, Popular Art in the Caribbean, and the work of Barbadian artist Ras Ishi Butcher.
Leah Gordon works as a photographer, filmmaker and curator. She visited Haiti for the first time in 1991, and continues to have a personal and professional relationship with the country. In 2006 she commissioned the Grand Rue Sculptors from Haiti to make 'Freedom Sculpture', a permanent exhibit for the International Museum of Slavery in Liverpool. Continuing her relationship with the Grand Rue artists, Gordon organized and co-curated the Ghetto Biennale in December 2009. She has also been involved in a range of projects as both creator and curator, including documenting experiences of homophobia in London, crossing-dressing in Vodou, links between the Slave Trade and the Thames and exhibitions of Haitian art. Her book 'Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti' will be published in June 2010.
Amareswar Galla is the first Professor of Museum Studies in Australia at the University of Queensland. Galla has provided professional leadership and support for the concept design and building of several inclusive museums and arts centres across the world. A champion of cultural democracy and indigenous cultural rights, Galla has addressed community, academic and professional conferences in over 50 countries during the past two decades. Currently he spends half the year building community grounded projects with the help of his graduate students in countries with low economic indicators. A long standing Board Member of Museum International, he is also the Editor-in-Chief of four leading knowledge platforms on Sustainable Heritage Development: Inclusive Museum (www.onmuseums.com); Intangible Heritage (www.ijih.org); Four Pillars of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability (www.sustainability.com); and Climate Change (www.on-climate.com).
Teka Selman is Exhibition and Program Coordinator, DocXArts at Duke University, an interdisciplinary MFA program incorporating film, video, documentary and experimental artistic practices. She was previously Partner at Branch Gallery, an art space that received national attention for its focus on the work of emerging artists. Prior to relocating to Durham, North Carolina, she was Director at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York City. Her writing on artists such as Mark Bradford, Coco Fusco and Kara Walker has been featured in publications including The Black Moving Cube (The Green Box Kunstedition, 2006), Freestyle (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), and OneWorld Magazine. She is a 2010 Fellow of the International Curators Forum.

9 - 12 June 2010
Berlin

“Do you believe in reality? What a question, you’ll reply. Reality isn’t something you believe in. It proverbially catches up with you anyway – always. But then what are we talking about here? Maybe we could talk about the fact that you so often hear people saying something was different ‘in reality’? Or about why it has become so customary to add a ‘really‘ or an ‘actually’ or an ‘in fact’ to so many of the things we say? Let’s talk about the cracks in reality, about the gap between the world we talk about and the world that’s really there. But why this distinction? Because reality is always the other? Or the others? Everything that’s waiting out there?
Let’s talk about the self-deceptions where reality becomes too painful. Let’s talk about the fictional arsenal of the mass media and consumerism, about the rhetoric of distraction and appeasement. Won’t that ultimately lead us to question contemporary art, and its relationship to reality?” – BB6

On the occasion of BB6, the International Curators Forum will mediate a group response to the Biennale’s open question in the form of selected studio visits and presentations with Haegue Yang, Nasan Tur, Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, Thomas Kilpper, Ming Wong, Omer Fast, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Mayaan Amir and Ruti Sela. Thinking and moving around this question of what constitutes ‘reality’, each encounter will approach and consider the core question in relation to individual research and practice informed by the conditions of trans-nationality, migration, autonomy and community.

5 Bursaries to attend are available ... (BURSARIES)