8 November 2017 6pm
South Street Arts
The studio bar will be open from 5pm.
Kerry Campbell is a curator living and working in her hometown of Luton. She is the founder and director of ‘TMT Projects’ – an arts platform through which she has developed and delivered exhibitions and events since 2012. In light of Luton Town’s statistically low arts engagement, TMT’s projects have connected directly with the conceptual and logistical challenges of working with alternative spaces, fostering new partnerships and engaging new and diverse art audiences. TMT Projects support locally emerging and nationally established artists, introducing the latter to Luton and its culturally diverse, post-industrial context. Kerry has hosted ambitious projects in spaces such as former hat factories, pubs, nightclubs, empty shops, offices, factories and youth centres.
Kerry Campbell will discuss curating through contexts. She acknowledges that her work challenges the artist/curator binary. Prioritising a commitment to working class audiences, her approach necessarily reacts against conventional didactic exhibition techniques, privileging locally informed, multidisciplinary formats. Kerry will make reference to her divergent academic interests, mapping how they have all informed and transformed her curatorial practice and commitment to exhibition innovation and regional curating. These areas of interest include the history of social class, post-industrial communities and diversifying arts engagement. As a further inspiration to recent multidisciplinary projects, Campbell will cite the history of alternative arts education from the Bauhaus to the present day, an interest catalysed through her time studying with ‘School of the Damned’ – a radical peer led alternative arts MA.
