Curated Selections 2024

Curated Selections invites artists, curators and cultural workers to explore the Axis archive and present a themed selection of member works. Each guest brings their own voice and way of seeing. The series helps audiences encounter contemporary art through many lenses and gives members a visible way to share work in a public context.

Each edition sits in the Axis Gallery with an introduction written by the curator. Together they form a growing resource that shows how artists respond to the world and how ideas move through practice.

Here, There and Elsewhere: Encountering Ghosts, Forests and Archives

Curated by Eelyn Lee

Eelyn Lee is an artist and filmmaker who works with collective research, devised theatre and film. Her practice explores race, identity and forms of othering, often through stories that sit between memory, history and imagination.

Eelyn’s selection moves through memory, archives and hauntings. She reflects on diasporic histories, the presence of ghosts in overlooked places and the way different realms of time and experience can sit side by side. The works shift between the real and the fictional, the present and the past, the physical and the psychological.

• Link to Eelyn's curated selection

Take Me Back To When The World Made Sense

Curated by JC Candanedo

JC Candanedo is an artist and photographer whose work explores identity, social justice and visual storytelling. He also serves as Co-Chair of the Axis Board of Trustees.

JC reflects on the artist as someone trying to make sense of the world. The works he chose speak clearly about the issues shaping daily life. They hold up a mirror to society and invite the viewer to look again at what we often overlook. His text questions the pressure to keep politics out of art, even when lived experience is shaped by it.

• Link to JC's curated selection

Mourning

Curated by Holly Slingsby

Holly Slingsby is an artist working with ritual, mythology and the body. She makes installations, performances and objects that explore belief and shared experience. She is also a trustee at Axis.

Holly frames mourning as both personal and collective. Her selection gathers works that give form to grief and loss in many shapes. Together they show how art can hold difficult emotions, create space for reflection and bring people together through shared experience.

• Link to Holly's curated selection

Sink or Float

Curated by Zinzi Minott

Zinzi Minott is an artist working with dance, the body and Black histories. Her work examines movement, labour, precarity and the legacies of colonialism.

Zinzi writes with candour about the pressures faced by artists. She notes the pull between leaving and staying in a sector that often strains those within it. The works she selected remind her of the deep pleasure of making. They hold energy, humour and persistence. She offers this selection as a small act of care for herself and for other artists.

• Link to Zinzi's selection

Why This Matters

Curated Selections opens up the many ways artists think, work and respond to the world. Each guest curator brings a different way of seeing, which helps widen how audiences encounter contemporary art. 

The series offers Axis Professional members fresh routes to share their work and places their practice in conversation with others. It also creates a growing public resource that shows how themes, ideas and lived experience shape artistic practice today.
 

Invitation

We welcome proposals from artists, curators and influencers who would like to create a future Curated Selection. If you are interested in making a selection, please get in touch with us to start a conversation.