Curatorial Projects



In Focus: Danielle Brathwaite Shirley
Open City Documentary Festival Expanded Realities, 7-12 September 2023

Co-curated with Lucy Wardley, In Focus: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley presented three recent digital works by the artist in London for the first time, covering formats ranging from film to interactive video games. The exhibition marked the first retrospective programme of the artist’s work and was the festival’s first In Focus programme to feature an expanded realities artist.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is a London-based artist working across media including moving image, animation, performance and print. Using a range of digital tools, particularly early 3D game engines, Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice creates worlds that serve as archives of black trans experiences designed for black trans audiences in the present and future.

More information about the exhibition, the works presented and a new essay on Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice by artist and curator April Lin 林森 can be found here.



A Screening of worker-produced films from Australia and Indonesia
MayDay Rooms, 4 March 2023

This free screening provided an opportunity to view two rarely screened films made by workers to document and resist their exploitation. The films were produced in Australia in the 1980s and Indonesia in the 2000s, giving an insight into the labour issues and workers' use of filmmaking outside Europe and North America.

Serena Everill and Chris Brown's Running out of Patience, shot on picket lines and demonstrations during the nurses' strike of 1986 in Australia, provided direct testimony from nurses, many of whom were taking political action for the first time.

The Globalisation Tapes was produced by workers from the Independent Plantation Workers’ Union of Sumatra (Indonesia) and the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF) in collaboration with the Vision Machine Film Project. Using a range of footage, much of it shot by the workers, the film unpicked how the struggle of Indonesian workers was a result of both domestic political violence and the complicity of multinational trade bodies and corporations. 

The screening was followed by an open discussion.




Treatment: The House is Black + Face of our Fear 
Close-Up Film Centre, 26 January 2023

This was the first programme from Treatment, a programme of films that make space for individual agency and subjecthood within institutional spaces of care and health. 

The programme consisted of a screening of Forough Farrokhzad’s 1963 documentary The House is Black alongside Stephen Dwoskin’s essay film Face of our Fear from 1992 and was introduced by me.

The full programme notes can be found here.





Proserpina: Henry Baker and Preslav Kostov
Apiary Studios, 24-28 March 2022

Proserpina was an exhibition that placed into conversation the paintings and practices of Henry Baker and Preslav Kostov, at Apiary Studios in London’s Bethnal Green.

Many of the the works, produced whilst Baker and Kostov were  studying on the Painting MA programme at the Royal College of Art were presented for the first time. Viewers were invited to take in the rich dialogue between the two artists in an intimate setting.

Kostov and Baker adopted different, complementary palettes and approaches to representation and abstraction. Yet they shared a common concern with painting’s ability to speak directly and vigorously to its viewer, allowing for rich parallels to be drawn between their works. Their practice exposed their traces of production and figures with a remarkable frankness. The assertion of this openness was accompanied by further worlds, buried and protected within the layers of paint.

The psychological themes of chaos, destruction and rebirth exist under the confident exposure of these surfaces. Baker and Kostov’s works were here presented in a contemplative environment to allow for reflection on these themes. Visitors were encouraged to inhabit the space, taking the time they needed to draw connections between the works as they developed.

Viewers could wander, sit down and be led around the space by their intuition. Proserpina was intended to be a homely, comfortable environment that lended itself to vulnerability.