About
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The Museum of Contemporary Art, London was founded in 1994 as a project based museum. No formal built space was to be required to mount a series of international exhibitions that incorporated sculpture, video, painting, photography and installation. Projects were curated for virtual and specific sites.
In January 2004 MOCA opened a project space in South London in the Bellenden Renewal Area to initiate a series of exhibitions that were locally based but global in focus. The Project Space exists to offer established and upcoming artists the possibility of making non-commercial work, developing the projects over various periods of time to suit both the artist and MOCA. Projects emerge when they are ready. This co-operative style of working means that the Project Space has no formal exhibition structure, and works are in situ when they are ready. MOCA London is conveniently located in the heart of Bellenden road, 5 minutes walk from Peckham Rye Station. |
People
Michael Petry - Director / Curator
Portrait by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Petry is an internationally exhibited multi-media artist, author and co-founder of the Museum of Installation. He lectures part time at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and was Guest Curator at the KunstAkademi, Oslo, and Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton. The Trouble with Michael, a monograph of his current artistic practice was published by ArtMedia Press in 2001. Petry co-authored Installation Art (Thames & Hudson, 1994), and Installation in the New Millennium (Thames & Hudson, 2003), and authored Abstract Eroticism (Academy Editions, 1996) and A Thing of Beauty is...(Academy Editions, 1997). Petry’s current book Hidden Histories: 20th century male same sex lovers in the visual arts (2004) is the first comprehensive survey of its kind, and accompanies the exhibition Hidden Histories he curated for New Art Gallery Walsall.
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Roberto Ekholm - Curator
Ekholm is an artist and curator who studied dance at Laban Centre, London and Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London. His work includes performances, sculpture and photography drawing on our present ideas about identity through discourses of medicine and the body. He is the creator of the curatorial company EKCO London and has curated internationally as well as turning his home into a gallery space. Recent exhibitions include Connubial, Garborg Centre, Norway, Immerse, Kinkino, Norway, Hmmmmm, HilbertRaum, Berlin, EKCO Art salon and co-curating together with Michael Petry the touring exhibition Nature Morte shown at major museums in Norway, Sweden, Poland and London. He has also designed several exhibition catalogues for MOCA London and EKCO London. He currently lives and works in London.
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Paola D'Albore - Image Researcher
D'Albore is a researcher in contemporary art, she works with galleries and artists internationally. She is an image researcher for several of Michael Petry's Thames and Hudson books and has produced various exhibition catalogues.
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Maxwell Shirley - Assistant Curator/Archivist
Shirley is an archivist who's extensively researched and worked towards presenting the MOI (Museum of Installation) archive to Tate Library. He also assists in curating various projects at MOCA London.
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Guest Curators
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Koan Jeff Baysa
Kóan Jeff Baysa is a curator, writer, art collector, practicing physician, and Whitney Independent Study Program Curatorial alumnus. A contributing writer for New York Arts Magazine and the online publication Flavorpill, he has written for Art Asia Pacific and is the editor of the online art magazine art::pulse. He has curated exhibitions for the London Biennal, the LA International Biennial, and recently organised shows in Beijing, Dublin, London, Manila and for the United Nations. Dr. Baysa is on the boards of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University, Art Omi International Artist Colony, the Asian American Art Centre, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.
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Kjetil Bjorheim
Bjorheim is an artist and curator who practiced electronic engineering and teaching before completing a degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. He specialises in investigating structures of permission and exclusion in a humorous and socially engaging way. He explores mechanisms which are at the root of social organisation, emblematic systems of indoctrination, behavioural dependence and social cohesion. He currently lives and works in Stavanger
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Amelia Black
Black is designer, artist and curator who studies Object Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Black’s performance art includes her activities as a drag king and member of the Chicago Kings. Black assisted in the curation of the international Thick Design exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago and was a member of the School of the Art Institute's Design team collective_difference at the 2005 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York where they received the Editor's Award for Best Design School. Her work is apart of this year's Salone Satellite at the 2006 Milan Furniture Fair.
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Alan Yates
Yates is an artist and curator who studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, after training as a Civil Engineer. Curatorially he is interested in psychoanalytical studies in particular queer theory to address issues of memory and identity in the production of modern/contemporary art. As an artist he works with notions of power in the formation of the artist. He and Bjorheim curated “Play and Creativity” as a pre-event to Stavanger-European City of Culture 2008.
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Alana Lake Born in Tamworth, Staffordshire (UK) 1981. Lake studied at the Arts University College at Bournemouth undertaking a BA (Hons) in Photography, later embarking on a 3year postgraduate program at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, graduating in 2009. She has an international exhibitions record showing in London, Milan, Turin, Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Šiauliu, New York and Zurich. She has had solo exhibitions at the Aubin Gallery, London and the Museum of Contemporary Art, London (MOCA). She curated a lovers discord at MOCA London, She lives and works in Berlin. |
Dr Emma Parker
Emma Parker is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts at the University of Leicester. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary literature. She is editor of Contemporary British Women Writers (2004) and co-editor of The History of British Women’s Writing, 1970-Present (2015). She also co-edits the journal Contemporary Women’s Writing. Other publications include a 50th-anniversary edition of Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane (2014), essays on Orton and art, Orton and music, and gay and lesbian literature. She curated What the Artist Saw: Art Inspired by the Life and Work of Joe Orton. |
Melissa Jo Smith Melissa Jo Smith is a visual and textual artist, filmmaker, poet, writer, textile artist and arts producer. Working with schools, community groups, prisons and detention centres, Melissa Jo began developing arts projects to explore lost and hidden history and heritage, out of which sprang Illuminated Arts, a South London based CIC. Illuminated Arts aims to change people’s perspectives, improve their sense of self, enhance their wellbeing and generate a sense of belonging and pride that benefits the whole community. Her projects include the Peckham War Horse Project and Hairlooms, and she has collaborated with MOCA London on House of Queer Mirrors and the LGBT Sewing Bee. |