I am a contemporary art historian, curator and researcher specialised in the intersection of art with visual activism and militarised force. I am interested in art and its relationship to diverse forms of state violence including socially detrimental urban overdevelopment and military counterinsurgency tactics, especially psychological operations and propaganda. Conversely, I explore visual histories of solidarity and civil rights activism and develop revisionist and remedial curatorial formats for the presentation of art. My writing about art, reviews and interviews with artists and curators have been published in La Vanguardia de Barcelona, The Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, artnet.com, Lapiz, Kalias: Revisita de Arte, Art Review, RTE and more.
I am a 2026 Leverhulme Research Fellow working on the project ‘Solidarity Tactics: Visual Activism Linking Northern Ireland and Black America’.
I am currently collaborating with Tate on a major exhibition and research project ‘Conflict, Troubles, Contemporary Art’, which explores how contemporary art collecting and exhibition-making institutions respond to contested histories of militarised conflict.
My monograph based on an AHRC funded study combining contemporary art history with security, intelligence, and media studies The Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968-1982 is published by Routledge in 2025 in their Research in Art and Politics series.
I was Hayward Exhibitions Curator (1999-2007), Modern Art Oxford Senior Curator (2009-10), Co-Director of the Curating Contemporary Art Programme, Royal College of Art (2007-2014), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila Associate Curator (2014-17). Past curatorial projects include The Surface of the World (MCAD, Manila, 2014-17); Spectres of Modernism: Artists Against Overdevelopment (Raven Row, London 2017-18) and Open Plan: Communities in Contemporary Art (South London Gallery, 2022). I have worked with diverse visual arts organisations including Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; L’École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA) and the Alytus Biennale (Lithuania).
I am currently Senior Lecturer in Art and Public Engagement at the Department of Culture Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London.
I am Reviews Editor for Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ) (Intellect). Please contact me if you have ideas for exhibitions or books to review that fit with the journal remit.