This lecture is presented as part of AGENCY: A curatorial intensive in three questions—How do I learn? How do I act? How do I imagine? presented by Artspace Aotearoa and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery. Read more about the full symposium programme.

How I Learn: Restoring the Spirit of Collections and Place, an Indigenous space-time curatorial methodology.

There is a continuum of knowledge that manifests through contemporary practice and when artists and community activate object, space and place. These objects and sites can act as mnemonic portals of which we can walk between Ancestral space and today. In this lecture Kimberley Moulton will consider Indigenous temporality in relation to place and Ancestral belongings in museum collections and the role of contemporary artists in re-storying these spaces beyond the historic past and colonial centre. This Global Majority inter-cultural and space-time dialogue will consider an approach to curatorial work through her framework of restoring the spirit and consider deep-time relational ecologies and materialities that guide her in her practice. Sharing examples of recent projects that meet at the intersection of contemporary art, historical archive and place Moulton will consider the way in which she learns from Country, community and collections.

Workshop participants already have a reserved place at this lecture and are not required to RSVP.

AGENCY: A curatorial intensive in three questions—How do I learn? How do I act? How do I imagine? is presented by Artspace Aotearoa and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery and supported by Chartwell Trust, Goethe Institut, National Services Te Paerangi, and Toi o Aotearoa Creative New Zealand Te Manu Ka Tau International Delegates Programme.

Dr Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman from Australia and a curator and writer. Moulton is a respected international curator working across modern and contemporary art and historical collections. Leading research and curatorial practice in the field of connecting knowledge, histories and futures at the intersection of historical collections and contemporary art, her work centres regenerative re-worlding of art histories and ecological, cultural and relational Indigenous and Global Majority creative practices. Working with artists to amplify underrepresented art histories, Moulton’s practice foregrounds connecting communities to collections, through rematriation and re-spiriting collections and place beyond the colonial past. This work has positioned Moulton at the forefront of local and international curatorial and writing praxis which supports contemporary art across multidiscipline areas to re-frame a new dialogue between object, place and community. Her research interests include Indigenous rematriation, Ancestral belongings and restitution, Indigenous space-time cosmologies and embodied knowledge in contemporary art practice. Along with her curatorial work Moulton is currently Deputy Chair of the Board for Australia’s leading regional art gallery, Shepparton Art Museum and Director of the board for the Adam Briggs Foundation.