SEVENTH Gallery presents the fourth event in their Career Arcs Conversation Series: Art Practice and Curatorship with Nikki Lam and Clare Anna Watson.

Building a career in the arts can take multiple trajectories often beyond the studio and gallery. To support their practice, artists invest labour in alternative practices and commercial ventures. Reflecting on the reality of multi-vocational practice, the conversation series Career Arcs will engage art professionals in a demystification of their fields, careers and individual experiences, as their practice intersects with the broader arts ecology. Selected from the fields of curatorship, publishing, festivals and design, this series brings together arts workers in conversation, providing unique insights for artists and audiences to reflect on the challenges and joys of vocational practice in the arts. 

Part Four in the series brings together Nikki Lam and Claire Anna Watson in conversation, exploring the intersections of creative practice and curatorship.

BIOGRAPHIES:

Nikki Lam is a visual artist, curator and arts worker based in Melbourne, Australia. From video and installation, to writing and performance, Nikki's practice engages in the complexity of belonging through the exploration of self, memory and space. Working primarily with the moving image, she is also passionate about the cross-sections of screen cultures, media arts and representations of narratives and histories. Born in Hong Kong (1988), she is interested in the translations of hybrid identities and narratives, often through the studies of rituals, language and their representations. Nikki’s work has been shown as part of Underbelly Arts Festival, SafARI, Firstdraft, BUS Projects, The Substation, The Ferry Gallery (Bangkok, Thailand), Galleria Marcollini (Forli, Italy), and many more. Her most recent curatorial projects include Frames of Seeing (2017) at Nite Art, Screen as a Room (2016) at THE SUBSTATION and Channels Festival (2015). She is the former Artistic Director of Channels Video Art Festival (2014-2017) and has worked in a range of arts organisations including Footscray Community Arts Centre, Peril Magazine and Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT). She is currently at Australian Centre for Moving Images (ACMI).

Claire Anna Watson works across media from ephemeral installations, photography and video-based work, through to public art. In her practice, she explores the relationship of food and science. She holds a Master of Fine Art from Monash University and a Graduate Certificate in Public Art from RMIT University. The artist has held several solo exhibitions including at May Space 2017, Anna Pappas Gallery 2016, Brenda May Gallery 2015 and Gippsland Art Gallery in 2011. Her works have been curated into numerous group exhibitions, including Cornucopia at Shepparton Art Museum 2016, Made to Last, a NETS Victoria touring exhibition to venues including McClelland Gallery and QUT Art Museum 2012, and FEAST: Pleasure + Hunger + Ritual at Lexington Art League, USA 2015. She is the Senior Curator at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre. Over a period of seven years, she was also the Chair of the Artistic Directors and Board of BLINDSIDE.

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This event is proudly supported by the City of Yarra.