TULCA 2016 Curator Daniel Jewesbury will talk about the background to The Headless City, introducing ideas he’s been developing in art, writing and exhibition-making over more than a decade, which have led to this year’s festival. He’ll also discuss the presentation and organisation of the many exhibited works in the different venues, and explain why events, performance and site-specific interventions are a major feature of his show.
The talk will last approximately 50 minutes, and there will be time for questions.
Daniel Jewesbury was born in London in 1972 and studied Sculpture at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin before moving to Belfast in 1996. Since then Daniel’s been working as an artist, a researcher and lecturer, a writer and editor, and a freelance curator. Daniel’s most recent exhibition in the Republic was as one of the selectors for Pallas Projects’ fifth Periodical Review exhibition, at Pallas and the NCAD Gallery in December 2015 and January 2016. Daniel also devised and curated the highly ambitious ‘re:public’ exhibition / happening / event programme at Temple Bar Gallery, in 2010. Daniel’s work, in a range of media including film, video, photography, radio and performance, has been shown internationally. Most recently he’s delivered a number of ‘performative lectures’ that investigate such concerns as urban development (particularly in Belfast), and the repressed, intertwined themes of sex, death and desire in art. He’s currently working on an artist’s book about FE McWilliam’s infamous sculpture, Woman in a Bomb Blast.
Daniel has been publishing art criticism for over 20 years, initially in Circa (where he was also a board member), and then in titles such as Art Monthly, Flash Art, Third Text and Enclave Review, as well as in catalogue texts for artists including Duncan Campbell, Willie Doherty, Garrett Phelan and Cian Donnelly. Daniel is currently a regular contributor to Source magazine. In his research, Daniel addresses a broad range of topics including the development of contemporary European cities and the histories of Irish visual culture and experimental cinema. Daniel is currently finishing a book on space and place in post-Agreement Belfast, with Robert Porter.
Jewesbury was a co-editor of Variant magazine for over a decade, until it ceased publishing due to the withdrawal of funding. Recently, he’s edited publications for Fingal County Council, 126 Artist-Run Gallery, and the European artists’ network Centrifugal.
Daniel is a lecturer in film at the University of Ulster (where he gained his PhD in 2001). He’s been a supervisor or visiting lecturer at many colleges including NCAD, Dublin, Limerick School of Art, IADT and, in 2015, at the Valand Academy of the University of Gothenburg.
