Join artist Jesse Jones and Annie Jael Kwan, independent curator and researcher, in conversation in this virtual event as part of the Public Engagement Programming for I Never Promised You a Dystopia curated by Aoife Banks for Kilkenny Arts Office Emerging Curator in Residence Programme 2021.
To view I Never Promised You a Dystopia please click here
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Jesse Jones is a Dublin-based artist. Her practice crosses the media of film, performance and installation. Often working through collaborative structures, she explores how historical instances of communal culture may hold resonance in our current social and political experiences. Jones’ practice is multi-platform, working in film installation, performance and sculpture. Her recent work proposes a re-imagining of the relationship between the Law and the body through speculative feminism.
Using a form of expanded cinema she explores magical counter-narratives to the State drawn from suppressed archetypes and myth. Major public commissions include, in the Shadow of the State with Sarah Browne co-commissioned by Create, Artangel and ART: 2016
She represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2017 with the project ” Tremble Tremble” who’s title is inspired by the 1970s Italian wages for housework movement, during which women chanted “Tremate, tremate, le streghe sono tornate! (Tremble, tremble, the witches have returned!)”.
Recent solo exhibitions include, Guggenheim Bilbao, Samstag Adelaide, Talbot Rice gallery Edinburgh, Project Arts Centre, ICA Singapore and an upcoming solo presentation at Guggenheim Bilbao. Future projects include a five year commission for kunsthalle Gent, The Magdalen project at Rua Red in 2022. Her teaching practice runs parallel to her work as an artist, this practice is based on Sherkin Island Cork as a lecturer for TU Dublin School of Creative Arts.
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Annie Jael Kwan is an independent curator and researcher whose exhibition-making, programming, publication and teaching practice is located at the intersection of contemporary art, art history and cultural activism, with interest in archives, histories, feminist, queer and alternative knowledges, collective practices, and solidarity. She is director of Something Human, a curatorial initiative, that launched in 2017 the pioneering Southeast Asia Performance Collection (SAPC) which represents 50 artists from the region at the Live Art Development Agency. In 2018 she curated UnAuthorised Medium at FramerFramed, Netherlands, co-curated the Archive-in-Residence exhibition, Southeast Asia Performance Collection at Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019), and is currently curator-in-residence at FACT Liverpool where she has curated the exhibition, Futures Ages Will Wonder.
She leads Asia-Art-Activism (AAA), an interdisciplinary, intergenerational research network exploring the entanglements between Asia, art and activism, and is the instigating council member of Asia Forum. In 2019 she was the co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia’s guest issue: Archives, and a recipient of a Diverse Actions Leadership Award. She currently teaches Critical Studies at Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London, and Writing and Curating at KASK, School of Art, in Gent, Belgium.
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I Never Promised You a Dystopia is a virtual group exhibition accessible online from the 6th – 19th Dec that explores speculative futurisms with a focus on queer, feminist, and anti-capitalist ideologies. This exhibition features work by Bassam Al-Sabah, Kevin Gaffney, Jesse Jones, Vera Klute, and Doireann O’Malley.
For more information on I Never Promised You a Dystopia please click here.
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and the works featured are from their Collection.
