Archipelago: Visions in Orbit

Cameron Ugbodu (b. 2000, Austria), aka “See You”, is an autodidact Nigerian and Austrian multidisciplinary artist living and working in London. Through their work, Cameron investigates family histories, identity and queerness. Influences and techniques learned from their family’s heritage from Benin City (Edo State, Nigeria) and the Wachau area (Austria) shape Cameron’s practice. Craftsmanship has always been an important part of Cameron’s family, this coupled with difficulty expressing themselves verbally has led Cameron to explore visual expression through different mediums in order to communicate their world to others. On a constant search for oneself, their work archives different stages of their experience and the space surrounding them with a gaze towards the future and exploration.

Process-led, Daniella Valz Gen’s work explores poetic experience through different forms of reading, writing, performing and making. They’re invested in a relational and responsive approach to land, place, and the other-than-human. Born in Peru and based in London, Valz Gen’s work highlights the interstices between languages, cultures and value systems as areas where potential new meanings can arise.  

Valz Gen’s work has been shown at Glasgow International, SPILL Festival, Aichi Triennale, Gropius Bau among others. Subversive Economies, their first poetry collection, was published by PSS Press in 2018. Their writing has been featured in The Happy Hypocrite, Map Magazine, Salt, and others. Valz Gen is Whitechapel Gallery’s Writer in Residence for 2024. 

Esther Teichmann (b. 1980, Germany) practice moves across still and moving image, textiles and painting, creating alternate worlds, which blur autobiography and fiction. Central to the work lies an exploration of the origins of fantasy and desire and how these are bound to experiences of loss and representation. Our relationship to the maternal, home and female pleasure are themes which are returned to through a layering of voices and visual approaches.  Within these works of speculative fiction, bodies are indivisible from landscape –  caves as mothers, water as mothers, beds as lovers, mouths as homes, seashells as orifices, sisters at every turn.  The work is haunted by night dreams and daydreams, of drowning and sleeping. Thinking about our bodies as sites of knowledge production, Teichmann reimagines space and encounters through feminist subjectivity, exploring the relationship between fiction, myth and lived experience. 
 
Solo museum shows include Heavy the Sea, Transformer Station, Cleveland Museum of Art, USA and Mondschwimmen, Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, Germany. Collaborations include Phantasie Fotostudio with Monster Chetwynd at John Hansard Gallery, the co-curation and editing of the exhibition and book, Staging Disorder, with artist Christopher Stewart with whom she also created the Wellcome Trust funded film and research project, Constellations. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Esther is represented by Flowers Gallery. Teichmann received an MA and PhD from the Royal College of Art (RCA) and is Head of Programme of the Master of Research at the RCA.

Güler Ateş (b. 1977, Turkey) moved from Turkey to London in ​1998, studying first at Lewisham College ​and then moving on to a BA in Painting at ​Wimbledon School of Art. She ​subsequently graduated with an MA in Fine ​Art from the Royal College of Art in 2008. ​Her work has been exhibited widely in the ​UK and internationally including solo ​exhibitions in Washington DC, Mumbai, ​Turin, Amsterdam, Napoli, Porto, Okinawa ​and London. Güler has been awarded ​numerous prizes for her work including the ​Arts Council England Project Award in ​2020. Her work is also held in notable ​collections including the Royal Collection, ​Turin, Italy, the Victoria and Albert ​Museum, London, Royal Academy of Arts, ​and the Government Arts Collection, UK.

Dr. Jade de Montserrat (b. 1981, UK) was the recipient of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholarship supporting her PhD and the development of her work from her Black Diasporic perspective in the North of England. de Montserrat works through performance, drawing, painting, film, installation, sculpture, print and text. In 2020, Iniva and Manchester Art Gallery commissioned her as the first artist for the Future Collect project, with a solo exhibition Constellations: Care and Resistance at Manchester Art Gallery (2020 – 2022). In 2021, she participated in a group exhibition An Infinity of Traces at Lisson Gallery, and opened a solo exhibition In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens at Bosse & Baum Gallery, London. In 2022, she was included in the group exhibition Body Vessel Clay, at Two Temple Place, London, and York Art Gallery (2022), and A Tall Order! – Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s, at Touchstones, Rochdale (2023). Most recently she had a solo exhibition titled Soul of Fire, Old Parcels Office Artspace, Scarborough (2023). In 2023 the artist co-launched Soul of Fire Artists’ Charcoal to make the material accessible to schools and communities. In 2024, de Montserrat launched Cracks in the Curriculum 5 with Serpentine Education, she participated in a solo exhibition In Defence of Our Lives at Bosse & Baum Gallery, London and a group exhibition Towards New Worlds at MIMA, Middlesbrough. In Autumn 2024, the artist will participate in a group exhibition titled Conversations at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Jade de Montserrat is a Tutor at Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. 

Jakob Rowlinson (b. 1990, UK) lives and works ​in London. He studied BA Fine Art at The ​Ruskin School of Art (Oxford University), ​and MA Sculpture at the Royal College of ​Art (London). He works across leather ​masks, embroidery, and jacquard ​tapestries to weave alternative histories ​steeped in queer culture, mythology, and ​nature. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Thirteen ​Fools’ at Huxley Parlor gallery, London UK ​(2024), and ‘Faerie Land’ at the Dowse Museum in Wellington, New Zealand ​(2023). His work has also been featured in ​group exhibitions at Steve Turner Gallery, ​Los Angeles (2023), and Guts gallery, ​London (2023). 

The Master of Arts degree in Curating Art and Public Programmes is a unique collaboration with London South Bank University (LSBU), training emerging curators over a one-year, full-time course. Focusing on curating art and public programmes and culminating in the students’ final exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, it offers a unique curriculum that stands out from other curating courses. The backbone of the programme is a professional placement, an exclusive opportunity to learn in a real-life environment at an internationally renowned public contemporary art gallery. Students work alongside highly-experienced staff across the Gallery over a period of 20 weeks in addition to attending other taught modules. This programme allows students to apply the knowledge, understanding and skillset acquired through this course in the workplace. Candidates enter the professional field with practical knowledge, confidence and a strong global vision as they are connected with professional networks from the outset. 

Course directors: Professor Geoff Cox, LSBU and Dr. Nayia Yiakoumaki, Whitechapel Gallery. The Programme Coordinator is Alice-Anne Psaltis.  

For more information about the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes course, see here.