The International Curatorial Residency Returns to Somerset

About the Participants

Yoshua Okón

Artist Yoshua Okón currently lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. His work blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation, questioning habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and morality. In 2002, Okón received an MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright scholarship.

His solo shows exhibitions include: ‘Yoshua Okón,’ Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles CA (2018); ‘Yoshua Okón: Collateral,’ Amparo Museum, Puebla, Mexico (2018); ‘Yoshua Okón: Collateral,’ University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico (2017 – 2018); ‘Yoshua Okón: In the Land of Ownership’, ASAKUSA Tokyo, Japan (2016); ‘Salò Island,’ University of California Irvine (UAG), Irvine CA (2014); ‘Yoshua Okón: Octopus,’ Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, UK (2013); ‘Poulpe,’ Mor Charpentier, Paris, France (2012); ‘Yoshua Okón: Piovra,’ Kaufmann Repetto, Milan, Italy (2011); ‘Yoshua Okón: Octopus,’ Hammer Museum, University California Los Angeles (UCLA) Los Angeles CA (2010 – 2011); and ‘Yoshua Okón: SUBTITLE,’ Städtische Kunsthalle, Munich, Germany (2008). Okón’s work is included in the collections of Tate Modern, London, UK; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles CA; National Gallery of Australia, Parkes, Canberra; Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; and University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico.

In 2009, alongside a collective of Mexican artists, Okón founded SOMA, a non-profit organization conceived to nurture discussion and exchange of ideas in the field of contemporary art and education. Responding to local needs, SOMA is a platform committed to strengthening art education, creating links and cooperation between cultural agents from different generations, contexts and nationalities, where debates, even if contradictory, can take place.

Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey

Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey is a producer, curator and editor with a background in economics, management and cultural policy. Together with designer Ab Rogers and neuroscientist Ash Ranpura, she is the co-founder of DRU+, a design research and development agency operating in the fields of healthcare, culture and sustainability. Since 2016, Bertolotti-Bailey has been Co-Director of publishing, archiving and learning platform The Serving Library.

Until 2022, Bertolotti-Bailey was the CEO of Cove Park, an international artists’ residency in rural Scotland, where she initiated an experimental program of practice-based research in ecological thinking and climate justice. This included co-designing an award-winning sustainable outdoor classroom onsite, assembling a multidisciplinary symposium on climate literacy in connection with COP26, and, perhaps most importantly, shifting the residency’s methodological approach from a discipline-based model to an inquiry-focused one. In this context, she co-founded the Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action, together with Leena Kela of Finland’s Saari Residence. The Alliance brings together artists’ residencies from seven Nordic countries to collaborate on research, commissions, institutional change and education around climate action.

Bertolotti-Bailey is currently investigating artists’ residencies as a specific type of temporary co-living and -working arrangement, in view of their potential for developing alternative socio-spatial strategies and protocols of sustainability. At a moment when large sectors of the humanities, arts and social sciences are tirelessly trying to imagine new ways to co-exist on an increasingly uninhabitable planet, artists’ residencies seem to be well placed to address some of our intractable intersectional problems, thanks to the collective intelligence that informs their institutional shape.

Dexter Wimberly

Dexter Wimberly is an American curator based in Japan who has organized exhibitions in galleries and institutions around the world, including: Museum of Arts and Design, New York NY; The Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas TX; The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte NC; KOKI Arts, Tokyo, Japan; BODE, Berlin, Germany; and The Third Line in Dubai, UAE.

Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, the Founder and Director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan and the Co-Founder and CEO of the online education platform, CreativeStudy. Founded in 2020, the Hayama Artist Residency introduces visual artists from around the world to Japanese culture,  offering them an opportunity to have their first gallery exhibition in Japan. Artists are not required to create new work during their residency, but they are encouraged to use their time in Japan to plan for their future and to develop new ideas.

About the Keynote

Alessio Antoniolli

Alessio Antoniolli is the Director of Gasworks in London, a non-profit contemporary visual art organization, where he leads a program of exhibitions, international residencies and participatory events, and the Director of Triangle Network, a global network of visual art organizations. Since 2022, Antoniolli has been the curator at Fondazione Memmo in Rome, Italy, where he programs one international exhibition each year. He has lectured widely and been part of many juries, including the UK’s Turner Prize in 2019.

Established in 1994, Gasworks works at the intersection between UK and international contemporary visual art practices and debates. Gasworks provides studios for London-based artists and commission emerging UK-based and international artists to present their first major exhibitions in the UK. The organization has developed a highly-respected international residencies program, which offers rare opportunities for international artists to research and develop new work in London, UK. All programs are accompanied by events and participatory workshops that engage audiences directly with artists and their work.

Triangle Network supports professional development and cultural exchange amongst artists, curators and other arts professionals. It counts approximately 20 active partners across the world. Most partners house artists studios and deliver exhibitions, artists and curators residencies, as well as hosting public events. Their partners include: Gasworks, London, UK (the main hub of Triangle Network); Khoj in Delhi, India; NCAI in Nairobi, Kenya; G.A.S in Lagos, Nigeria; Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa and URRA in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

About the Chair

Kate Fowle

Kate Fowle is the Senior Curatorial Director at Hauser & Wirth, based in New York NY. Prior to joining the gallery, she was Director of MoMA PS1 in New York NY, Chief Curator and Artistic Director at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia, and the Executive Director of Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York NY. She has also worked in China as the first International Curator of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and was the Co-Founder of the first Masters Program in Curatorial Practice on the West Coast of the United States in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. Before moving to the United States in 2001, Fowle was co-founder of Smith + Fowle, an independent curatorial partnership in London, UK.

Fowle has curated more than 50 exhibitions internationally and initiated a number of institutional programs to support artistic research and collective practices. She has conceived and edited publishing series, written extensively on artists’ expanded practices and published numerous extended texts on curating and exhibition histories. She initially trained as an artist, graduating in 1993.