Liverpool Biennial has appointed Joseph Grima and Dominic Willsdon to join its team of researchers and curators.
Joseph Grima has been appointed by Liverpool John Moores University to undertake joint projects across the University and the Biennial. As a Curatorial Correspondent for the Biennial, his research will focus on contemporary practice in the fields of architecture, urbanism and spatial practice.
Dominic Willsdon has been appointed as a Curatorial Correspondent for the Biennial. His research and program-development will relate to the fields of education, philosophy and public practice. He will lead on the development of the inaugural Summer Session in 2014 – an annual trans-disciplinary summer school.
The curatorial structure for Liverpool Biennial has been refined and the new roles of Curatorial Correspondents have been developed. Each correspondent has been invited to bring specific expertise to the Biennial and to join the ongoing research working long-term with the team across a number of years and Biennial Exhibitions. The curatorial structure for the Biennial takes into account the challenges of needing to understand the specificities of the local context and conditions, along with being part of an international debate. Recognising the importance of local operations and the need for situated curatorial practice and knowledge, a dynamic team of curators is based full-time in Liverpool. They lead on all aspects of the programme and ensure that there is an ongoing conversation with the city and its people year round.
Freelance curators are invited to join the team for each Biennial festival. For 2014 Mai Abu ElDahab and Anthony Huberman have been invited to curate the Biennial Exhibition. Bringing a range of expertise and experience to the City is a vital way to expand the thinking of the organisation. By inviting guest curators into the thinking process at early stages, and ensuring that the process is collaborative, Liverpool Biennial is kept rooted in the city without being defined by it. Curatorial Correspondents will develop research projects that will underpin the long-term development of the Biennial in the City.
JOSEPH GRIMA, Curatorial Correspondent
An architect by training, he has pursued an international career as a curator, essayist, critic and researcher in the fields of architecture, art and design. Between 2007 and 2010, he directed Storefront for Art and Architecture, the New York gallery which is globally renowned for promoting new trends in architecture, art and design. From 2011 to 2013 he was editor in chief of Domus, the international review of architecture, art and design. In 2012 he was appointed co-curator of the first edition of the Istanbul Design Biennial.
As a curator and independent researcher, he has designed and planned installations for events and institutions of international significance, including the Venice Architecture Biennial, the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture, and the Beijing Museum of Urban Planning. He is the author and editor of several books, and has taught architecture at several university institutes, including the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design (Moscow) and Trondheim University (Trondheim, Norway). He has published essays and articles in a large number of international magazines, including AD, Abitare, Domus, Tank, Urban China and Volume, as well as in the Italian newspaper il Sole 24 Ore.
DOMINIC WILLSDON, Curatorial Correspondent
Dominic Willsdon is an educator and curator. Since 2006, he has been Leanne & George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Professor in Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts. He is also a curator of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre which opened in September 2013.
From 2000 to 2005, he was Curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern and Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory at the Royal College of Art. He is a former editor of the Journal of Visual Culture, has written on visual culture, philosophy and education, and is co-editor of The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics (Cornell UP, 2008).
Dominic is also on the Governing Board of the International Association for Visual Culture. In 2010, he was the inaugural Samuel H. Kress Research Fellow in Museum Education at the Clark Art Institute.
