Relational / Zoë Shearman resume:
Zoë Shearman is curator of RELATIONAL, a Bristol-based contemporary art commissioning agency that works with artists on the production and presentation of context-led, socially engaged and participatory projects.
She studied Art History at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London. In 1990 she was appointed Director of Visual Arts at Riverside Studios, London, where the programme included exhibitions and ‘off-site’ projects by Judith Barry, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Brossa, Mat Collishaw, Jacki Irvine, Marysia Lewandowska, Yoko Ono, Simon Patterson and Hermione Wiltshire, and the international discussion series Legitimate Practices.
1994-99, she curated independently, including the major multi-site project The Visible and the Invisible: re-presenting the body in contemporary art and society, for the Institute of International Visual Arts, involving site specific installations by Louise Bourgeois, Tania Bruguera, Bruce Nauman Yoko Ono, Donald Rodney and Doris Salcedo amongst others. She also developed projects for Camden Arts Centre, the Freud Museum and the Architectural Association, London.
She became Co-Director of Spacex, Exeter, in 1999 where the programme included exhibitions and ‘off-site’ projects by Angus Fairhurst, Christine & Irene Hohenbuchler, Sigalit Landau, Jayne Parker and Lois Weinberger.
Since 2001, she has curated independently, including the multi-site projects Patterns, with Samta Benyahia and Zineb Sedira , and Homeland, presenting site-specific work by 44 artists in 8 everyday locations, including Tariq Alvi, Michael Curran, Grayson Perry, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Rosalind Nashashibi, both with Spacex.
Current projects include a series of commissions concerning our contemporary implication in the histories of slavery, for Plymouth Museum & Art Gallery, with artists Mel Jackson, Jyll Bradley, Lisa Cheung, Raimi Gbadamosi and Fiona Kam Meadley, and ‘off-site’ projects for Bristol as part of Arnolfini’s The Far West, co-curated with Tom Trevor and Lu Jie. She has produced a number of publications, and contributed texts to catalogues and magazines. She has lectured at Goldsmiths College, Dartington College of Art and Winchester School of Art. She also works as a consultant.
Although founded in 2004, RELATIONAL was preceded by Art + Location (2001-03) and Shearman/Trevor Partnership (1994-99).
