Speakers at the Future Now Symposium 2019
Adrian Biddell
Head of Paintings & Fine Art, Chiswick Auctions
Session 5: The Business of Art
Adrian Biddell is Head of Paintings and Fine Art at Chiswick Auctions. He also runs his own business, Adrian Biddell Fine Art Ltd, and oversees nine sales a year at Chiswick in three specialist areas – Old Masters Paintings and Works on Paper, British & European Fine Art and Modern and Post-War British Art – whilst also sourcing and selling privately on his own account. His specialist area is in European Paintings, which span from Realism to Surrealism.
Aimee Dawson
Assistant Digital Editor, The Art Newspaper
Session 6: Art Journalism in the Digital Age
Aimee Dawson is the assistant digital editor at The Art Newspaper, a journal of record for the visual arts world. She specialises in art from the Middle East and North Africa, having studied Arabic and Middle East studies and contemporary African and Asian art. Aimee is also Partnerships and Special Projects Manager at Ibraaz, working on the Visual Culture of the Middle East book series. Previous roles include being the writer-in-residence for Shubbak Festival.
Alessandro Vincentelli
Curator of Exhibitions & Research, BALTIC
Session 3: Do Curators Take Risks?
Alessandro Vincentelli is Curator of Exhibitions & Research at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. He previously worked as a Curator at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and at the Arts Council England. He trained in Social Anthropology before completing the Contemporary Curating Course at the Royal College of Art, London. At BALTIC he has curated exhibitions with Steve McQueen, Elizabeth Price, Yoko Ono and more.
Alex Majoli
Artist, Magnum Photos
Headline Speaker
Alex Majoli is an Italian photographer known for his documentation of war and conflict. After joining Magnum Photos in 2001, Majoli covered the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and two years later the invasion of Iraq. His work focuses on the human condition and the theatre within our daily lives. He continues to document various conflicts worldwide for Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Granta and National Geographic.
Ameena M. McConnell
Independent Design Curator, Creative Fruits
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Ameena is currently an ACE Change maker as Curator at large for the Design Museum. For LDF2018 she curated Loop.pH’s VR installation – Mind Pilot. For the public programme, Ameena has curated salons #I.BELONG and Be Seen! Get Heard! exploring themes – belonging, representation, visibility and leadership, amplifying voices of British creative professionals with heritages from the Afrikan diaspora and the Afrikan continent.
Ann Bukantas
Liverpool John Moores Painting Prize
Session 8: How to Get Ahead as an Emerging Artist
Founded in 1957, The John Moores Painting Prize is the UK’s best-known painting competition, supporting artists and bringing Britain’s best contemporary painting to Liverpool – culminating in an exhibition held every two years at Walker Art Gallery. As Head of Fine Art at the gallery, Ann has a specialist interest in 20th century and contemporary British art, curating exhibitions of David Hockney, Bill Viola and Conrad Shawcross.
Beatrice Bertram
Senior Curator, York Art Gallery
Session 3: Do Curators Take Risks?
Beatrice Bertram joined York Art Gallery from the National Trust, where she worked on a major project at Petworth House. Previously, she curated the Watts 200 sequence of exhibitions as Curatorial Fellow at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village, near Guildford, and held the Anne Christopherson Fellowship in the Prints and Drawings department at the British Museum, London. Recent shows at York Art Gallery have featured work by Isaac Julien.
Charlotte Ginsborg
Artist / Filmmaker
Session 2: Artists’ Film: Storytelling and Concept
Charlotte Ginsborg is an independent filmmaker whose films interweave documentary, narrative and performance to explore people’s psychological relationship to their social environments. Her work has been screened at the Venice Biennale, the Serpentine Gallery, the Pompidou Centre, the Walker Arts Centre, USA, Rotterdam and London Film Festivals. Recent films have been commissioned by Film London, Channel 4 and Poetry in the City.
Christiane Zschommler
Artist/Photographer
Session 7: The Reflective Lens
Christiane Zschommler is a UK-based photographer, born and raised in East Berlin. She uses notebooks, photographs, documents; and government statistics as starting point for reflecting on her experiences within society and creates images by obscuring the content and reducing them to fundamental shapes and forms until there are only traces of the original remaining. She is one of the shortlisted artists included in the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019.
Christopher Moore
Deputy Vice Chancellor for Advancement, YSJ
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Before his appointment at YSJ, Professor Moore was Assistant Vice-Principal and Director of the British School of Fashion. Prior to that, he was Chair in Marketing and Head of the Department of Management at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh. A graduate of the Universities of Glasgow and Stirling, his current research interests include retailer internationalisation; luxury brand marketing and trends and developments in youth consumption.
Clarice Hilton
VR / Psychology Researcher, UCL
Session 15: Art of Connectivity
Clarice Hilton is an artist and programmer interested in exploring our interactions in the virtual world. She has been selected for SPACE’s Art + Technology residency Focus: Next and has previously worked on immersive VR experiences with BBC, Anagram, as well as creating experiments at UCL. Her practice uses playful alternate realities to explore deep questions about human nature, the self and human relationships. She is interested in VR narratives.
Dan Bartlett
Programme Director, London College of Communication
Session 14: VR & Data-Influenced Artwork
Dan Bartlett is Programme Director for Moving Image and Digital Arts at LCC, London. His work is primarily focused on the impact of these practices on mainstream feature-length and long-form television animation production, live action filmmaking and virtual reality experiences. As an animation visual development artist, Dan aims to explore the duality that exists between artistic and cinematic principles.
David Birkin
Artist/Photographer
Session 7: The Reflective Lens
New York-based artist and 2018 Aesthetica Art Prize winner David Birkin’s work reflects on the ethics and aesthetics of contemporary conflict. At the core of Birkin’s practice is a concern for censorship and visibility. Past projects include a collaboration with the courtroom sketch artist at Guantánamo and a skywriting performance over Manhattan. Birkin studied at Oxford University, the Slade and Whitney Museum. He has written for Frieze.
Davy Smith
Research Associate, University of York
Session 14: VR & Data-Influenced Artwork
Davy Smith is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner, bridging fine art, interactive media and computer science. Davy completed a PhD at Queen Mary, University of London, focusing upon the design of intrinsically motivated neuro-evolutionary algorithms. Since 2016, Davy has worked within the Digital Creativity Labs, where he researches the potential applications of interactive storytelling and artificial intelligence to broadcast media.
Edmund Clark
Artist/Photographer
Session 7: The Reflective Lens
Edmund Clark’s work links history, politics and representation through bookmaking, installations, photography, video, text and found images. He engages with state censorship to explore unseen experiences and processes of control in the “Global War on Terror.” Clark has exhibited in major solo shows at the ICP, New York and the IWM, London. In 2018 Clark received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.
Emma Parker
Co-Founder, Parker Harris
Session 8: How to Get Ahead as an Emerging Artist
Emma Parker founded Parker Harris with Penny Harris in 1990. It is one of the leading visual arts consultancies and producers in the UK, specialising in the expert creation and project management of various visual arts projects spanning all disciplines and all scales, offering a wide variety opportunities to emerging and established artists, including the production of awards and bursaries to exhibitions and commissions and many more.
En Liang Khong
News and Comment Editor, Frieze
Session 6: Art Journalism in the Digital Age
En Liang Khong is News and Comment Editor at frieze magazine. He is also a regular arts reviewer for acclaimed publications such as The Times Literary Supplement and Financial Times. He previously worked as a journalist at openDemocracy, specialising in Chinese human rights, and his writing on art and politics has also appeared in Prospect, the New Statesman and The New Inquiry. Alongside this, he is former BBC Young Composer of the Year.
Giles Huxley-Parlour
Director, Huxley-Parlour Gallery
Session 5: The Business of Art
Giles Huxley-Parlour co-founded Beetles+Huxley Gallery in 2010 in response to the growing market for photography in London. In 2017 he became sole proprietor, and the gallery was renamed Huxley-Parlour Gallery. The gallery represents over 20 influential artists and estates, holds over 12 exhibitions per year, and participates in leading international art fairs. Giles studied History of Art at University College London.
Grey Skipwith
Fair Director, START Art Fair
Session 5: The Business of Art
Grey Skipwith is a gallerist and the director of START Art Fair. Grey founded the gallery in 2015, bringing together expertise in Korean and Asian artists. Grey has curated shows for galleries and public institutions as well as managing artists at different needs and stages in their careers. Recent publications include co-producing Korean Art: The Power of Now, published by Thames and Hudson in 2013 and supported a major solo show of Alex Katz.
Griselda Goldsborough
Aesthetica Art Prize
Session 8: How to Get Ahead as an Emerging Artist
Griselda Goldsbrough is a visual artist and writer, community educator and co-curator of an arts and events company, Spike and Sponge. She has over 15 years’ experience in devising and curating creative art, science and literature programmes and events. Griselda provides comprehensive arts and education consultancy which is tailored to meet client’s specific needs. She has also been involved in the Aesthetica Art Prize for several years running.
Gonzalo Herrero Delicado
Architecture Curator, Royal Academy
Session 3: Do Curators Take Risks?
Gonzalo Herrero is Curator of the Architecture Department at the Royal Academy of Arts in London where he has curated many public programmes, projects and exhibitions including Invisible Landscapes (2018-2019), Futures Found (2017) and the upcoming Eco-Visionaries (2019-2020). He held different curatorial positions at The Architecture Foundation and the Design Museum, where he co-edited the book Fear and Love (Phaidon, 2016).
Hannah Hughes
Head of Communications, Flowers Gallery
Session 5: The Business of Art
Hannah Hughes is Head of Communications and Curator of Photography at Flowers, a leading gallery exhibiting contemporary painting, sculpture, photography. Established in 1970, it represents artists including Edward Burtynsky, Edmund Clark, Julie Cockburn, Scarlett Hooft Graafland and Michael Wolf. Recent exhibitions include Life in Cities, Civilization and Prix Pictet Space. Hughes worked at Cubitt Gallery and Vancouver Film School.
Hannah Starkey
Artist/Photographer
Session 7: The Reflective Lens
Hannah Starkey’s photographs reconstruct cinematic scenes from everyday life, using actors within carefully considered settings. Starkey’s images centre around the female experience, evoking suggestive narratives through their appropriation of cultural templates: issues of class, race, gender, and identity are implied. Starkey has featured in The Guardian and Financial Times, and in collections at Tate, London, and the Seattle Art Museum.
Jamila Prowse
Project Manager, Lighthouse
Session 15: The Art of Connectivity
Jamila Prowse is a curator, editor and writer with a primary focus on widening accessibility to the arts sector. Jamila is Project Manager at Lighthouse, a contemporary digital arts organisation and charity specialising in connecting new developments in art, technology, science and society which has worked Haroon Mirza, Trevor Paglen Rafael Lozano Hemmer and more. She is also Founder of Typical Girls, an intersectional women’s magazine.
Jane Bhoyroo
Producer, Yorkshire Sculpture International
Session 10: Rethinking Sculpture
Jane Bhoyroo is the producer of Yorkshire Sculpture International, UK’s largest sculpture festival taking place across Leeds and Wakefield in summer 2019. The event will take over four world-renowned cultural institutions: Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Jane worked as a curator for Leeds Art Gallery and Arts Council’s sculpture collection. She was Relationship Manager for Arts Council.
Jason Higgins
Director, Harmony
Session 14: VR & Data-Influenced Artworks
Specialists in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality solutions, digital realities studio Harmony builds custom applications for global brands across retail, pharmaceutical, industrial, gaming, automotive, travel, aerospace and more. As director of Harmony Studios, Jason produces applications, 360 video, VR /AR content and 3D animated models for the likes of Sky, Unilever, HSBC, Nissan, Bentley and Land Rover. He also works at AliveLab LTD.
Jennifer Kean
Lecturer in Journalism, Leeds Trinity
Session 6: Art Journalism in the Digital Age
Jenny’s career spans 25 years in radio and magazines. With the BBC, she covered stories from the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) to the 2010 election count. Jenny taught an International Broadcast Journalism MA at Birmingham City University, before moving to Spain where she edited lifestyle magazine, La Luz. Previous roles include Subject Director, Media Production, York St John University. At Leeds she teaches radio, news, features and social media.
Julia Barfield MBE
RIBA Awards Assessor; Founder, Marks Barfield
Session 12: Ways of Living
Julia Barfield, MBE RIBA FSA, is a British architect and director of Marks Barfield Architects. Barfield created the London Eye together with partner David Marks, and has interest in vernacular architecture, geometry and how nature is organised. After studying at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Barfield worked for Foster and Partners for nine years. Barfield has served as an Awards assessor for RIBA and Civic Trust.
Kit Monkman
Artist & Film Director, KMA
Session 2: Artists’ Film – Storytelling and Concept
Kit is a leading and prolific innovator across screen-based art and interactive media. He directed the visually experimental UK feature Macbeth (2018), and co-directed The Knife That Killed Me (2012). As a founder of KMA, Kit has also worked as an installation artist in the interactive, public realm creating works that have dramatically transformed many iconic spaces, and as a theatre and show designer with artists as diverse as Prince and DV8.
Lennie Varvarides
Creative Producer, DYSPLA
Session 1: Politics of Representation
Lennie Varvarides studied fine art at University of the Arts, London, and has an MA in Writing for Performance. As an award-winning filmmaker, she is the Director and Creative Producer of DYSPLA, a studio producing the work of dyslexic and neurodivergent storymakers and sharing them with wider audiences. Funded by the Arts Council England, DYSPLA produces a wide range of film, theatre and installations.
Lexi Manatakis
Art Writer / Content Producer, DAZED
Session 6: Art Journalism in the Digital Age
Lexi Manatakis is an art writer and content producer pursuing ties between creativity and social advocacy, which she heralds as the running of her work across digital media, branded content, and social media. She is currently art writer and digital assistant at Dazed where she has been for nearly two years. Lexi started her career as a regular contributor for brands like i-D, VICE and Creators Project. She has a Masters in Publishing and Communications.
Lilli Geissendorfer
Jerwood Charitable Foundation
Session 8: How to Get Ahead as an Emerging Artist
Lilli Geissendorfer is the new Director of Jerwood Arts, an independent grant-making foundation and UK registered charity dedicated to supporting talent and excellence. Lilli has a background as a theatre producer with an interest in creating definitive new work with outstanding artists. Previous roles include Producer at Almeida Theatre and Relationship Manager for Theatre at Arts Council England. Lilli co-produced the first HighTide Festival in 2007.
Ludivine Large-Bessette
Artist
Session 2: Artists’ Film – Storytelling and Concept
Ludivine Large-Bessette is a French Visual Artist. In her multidisciplinary work, which uses both video, digital art, photography and contemporary dance, the represented body becomes a mirror that is able to unsettle, to question and to move the audience. She interrogates and confronts the viewer with the role of the body in our social interactions and in our contemporary environment. Her work was shortlisted for the 2019 Aesthetica Art Prize.
Marcel Feil
Artistic Director, Foam Amsterdam
Session 13: How do You Define a Photograph?
Marcel Feil is the Artistic Director at Foam Amsterdam, an international photography museum and publication championing emerging artists through the annual Foam Talent call. After having studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam, Marcel worked for the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. He was staff member of the Amsterdam Centre for Photography. Marcel joined Foam in 2002 and has organized many shows.
Mariana Pestana
Curator & Co-Founder of The Decorators
Session 2: Do Curators Take Risks?
Mariana Pestana is a Portuguese architect and curator. She works between Lisbon and London, where she co-founded The Decorators, a practice that rehearses possible futures through curatorial projects and interventions in the public realm. Mariana recently curated The Future Starts Here, at the V&A Museum and Eco Visionaries: Art and Architecture After the Anthropocene at MAAT. Mariana received her PhD in Architecture.
Michelle Williams Gamaker
Lecturer in Fine Art, Goldsmiths University
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Michelle Williams Gamaker is a moving image and performance artist, whose works explore the fiction-making machine of the 20th century. Williams Gamaker’s key focus is the restoration of marginalised characters as central figures. Her works explore migratory aesthetics, mental health and gender. She is a Lecturer at Goldsmiths, Chair of Trustees at Pavilion in Leeds and co-founder of the Women of Colour Index (WOCI) Reading Group.
Mike Laywood
Artistic Director, DASH
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Mike Layward has worked in the arts for nearly 40 years, as a performer, musician, carnival designer, maker, puppeteer, producer, director and live artist. Since 1999, Mike has been Artistic Director of DASH and has been instrumental in gaining a national reputation as the leading Disability Visual arts organisation in the UK. Mike’s philosophy is based on the belief that the arts are a vehicle for social change. Mike has an MA in Activism and Social Change.
Mike Stubbs
Artist & Creative Producer
Session 3: Do Curators Take Risks?
Mike Stubbs is an artist, curator and former Director of FACT, Liverpool, a new media arts centre. He was previously Head of Program for ACMI (Australian Centre of Moving Image) and Melbourne and Senior Research Fellow, Dundee University. He has commissioned and produced over 350 exhibition programmes and is also a moving image artist who has been shown at Baltic, Tate, BBC & C4. He was awarded a Fleck Fellowship, Banff, 2002.
Mila Askarova
Director, Gazelli Art House
Session 14: VR & Data-Influenced Artworks
Mila Askarova founded Gazelli Art House, London, in 2010 as a second space to the gallery in Baku. Through these contemporary art spaces and the creation of educational programmes, seminars and exhibitions, Mila has increased awareness of Azeri artists abroad. Upon completion of her International Relations BSc degree at LSE, she worked at Sotheby’s whilst curating shows in Baku and Istanbul. She is an alumna of Central Saint Martins and Christie’s.
Nick Ryan
Artist
Session 11: The Future of Sound Art
Nick Ryan is an Emmy and BAFTA-winning composer, sound designer, artist and audio specialist, widely recognised as a leading thinker on the future of sound. His extensive diverse practice involves working with film, motion graphics, animation, TV, interactive media and orchestral ensemble, pushing the limits of audio. Nick has been featured in the New York Times and Time Out, and has worked with the likes of Apple, BBC, BAFTA, Tate and TEDx.
Pamela Golden
Royal College of Art
Session 9: Painting in the 21st Century
Pamela Golden is a Senior Tutor in Painting in the School of Arts & Humanities at the Royal College of Art. Born in Chicago, Pamela studied an MFA in Painting alongside film history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has lived and worked in the UK since 1989. As an artist, she often integrates her own cross-cultural referencing into the work, revisiting and reworking photography through painting. She has exhibited for over 20 years throughout Europe and America.
Rebekka Kill
York St John University
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Dr Rebekka Kill joined York St John University as Head of the School of Art, Design & Computer Science in 2016, having previously held senior posts at Leeds Beckett University and Central St Martin’s. She was Chair of the Board at East Street Arts from 2013-2015 and is highly engaged with academic and practice-based communities in the region and nationally. During her career she has taught in a range of higher education contexts in both studio practice and also in critical and historical studies.
Rhea Storr
Artist / Filmmaker
Session 2: Artists’ Film – Storytelling and Concept
Rhea Storr makes work about black and mixed-race identities, asking where images fail or resist us. Informed by drawings and written research, she works primarily in 16mm film. Recent screenings include National Museum of African American History and Culture, European Media Art Festival, Berwick Film and Media Art Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival. She is the winner of the inaugural Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize.
Sarah Monk
Fair Director, London Art Fair
Session 5: The Business of Art
Sarah Monk is the Director of London Art Fair, which encompasses international and emerging contemporary art. After studying Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Sarah worked for the Serpentine Gallery, Hayward Gallery and National Touring Exhibitions, before moving to Upper Street Events. Sarah became Director of London Art Fair in 2014 developing new initiatives such as the Museum Partnership and Dialogues section.
Seetal Solanki
Founder of Ma-tt-er
Session 4: Sustainable Design
Seetal Solanki is the Founder and Director of materials research design studio Ma-tt-er and a Visiting Tutor on the Interior Design programme at the Royal College of Art. Seetal holds an MA in Textile Futures from Central Saint Martins. After graduating she went onto work for studios and brands such as Nissan, United Visual Artists, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, NIKE and Puma. Ma-tt-er explores the cycle of materials.
Shasti Lowton
Curator, The Design Museum
Session 1: The Politics of Representation
Shasti Lowton is a curator and art consultant who using exhibitions promote social change. Her research specialisms are in Latin American, South Asian, African and conflict art. Projects include collaborations with the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, The National Trust and Southbank Centre. Lowton curated the Science Museum Group’s award-winning Illuminating India: Photography 1857 – 2017 and is currently Curator at Design Museum.
Shawn Waldron
Curator, Getty Images Gallery
Headline Speaker
Shawn Waldron is a New York City-based photography curator. A member of the Getty Images Consumer Prints team since 2017, Shawn is the lead curator for the Getty Images Gallery in London and responsible for the offerings on photos.com. From 2003 to 2016, Shawn was Archive Director at Condé Nast. Whilst there, he revamped the company’s archival programme and was the founded the Condé Nast Gallery. He has written for many publishers.
Sylvia Xueni Pan
Lecturer in Virtual Reality, Goldsmiths University
Session 14: VR & Data-Influenced Artworks
Xueni Pan is a Lecturer in Virtual Reality at Goldsmiths University. Working in VR for more than 10 years, Xueni has developed a unique interdisciplinary research profile with journal and conference publications in both VR technology and social neuroscience. Her work has been featured in the media, including BBC Horizon and the New Scientist magazine. Previous roles include research associate in Computer Science, UCL.
Thomas Dukes
Curator, Open Eye Gallery
Session 7: The Reflective Lens
Thomas Dukes is the curator of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – a space to explore photography’s unique ability to connect, tell stories, reflect on humanity and to celebrate diversity and creativity. An MA in Arts, Aesthetics & Cultural Institutions at Liverpool University led to an internship with Karen Newman, an ongoing inspiration in visual media. Open Eye’s most recent shows include Ren Hang: Wake Up Together and the Liverpool Biennial.
Tina Ziegler
Fair Director, Moniker International Art Fair
Session 5: The Business of Art
Since 2009, Tina Ziegler has been at the progressive forefront of the urban and new contemporary art scene, responsible for the launch of growth of numerous fairs, galleries and artists alike. Having curated well over 100 exhibitions across countless countries, and in doing so introducing collectors and art lovers to thousands of artists, she acts as a leading authority within the scenes. She is also currently the founder of The Art Conference.