NEWS RELEASE: Announcing our new Guest Curator of Organisational Development, Jack Ky Tan.

20 September 2024

Dear Diary,

I’ve just come away from my second meeting in my new role as Guest Curator of Organisational Development which I am going to do part-time until 2027! The team say that through my artistic practice, it’s an opportunity for John Hansard Gallery (JHG) to explore emerging forms of organisational futurities and their place in art and art activist history. But it’s also a chance for JHG to reflect on how this new knowledge can enrich and transform its own systems. This is music to my ears!

It’s actually a new experience for me to be engaging as a staff member (i.e., viewing Institution from within) as opposed to my usual role of being a consultant (viewing from the outside) or on a Board of Trustees (from above). It is an act of trust and openness I think for an institution to receive and hold an artist in this way, and to expose its insides. And for me too… to trust the institution’s ability to hold me and my insides.

Maybe a big part of the trust comes from the unexpected pleasure of encountering a very familiar vibe at JHG. It feels almost as if I am back in art school doing a group project or in an art collective. Discussions so far feel responsive, creative and empathetic.

Actually, Woodrow, John Hansard Gallery’s Director said to me last week:

“People seldom think of institutions as being artist-run. It’s more often informal groups or structures that come to mind. The majority of our team are originally artists, including me. So reframing our work across comms, policy and governance as part of our artistic programme is an exciting return to practice. Through these conversations and your role as Guest Curator of Organisational Development, it’s a wonderful opportunity to embrace all the potential roles that artists can play within an institution.“

Right now, I’m not sure what ‘curating organisational development’ fully means. Nor does the team 😅. But the uncertainty and possibility is what’s exciting!

However the job title does open up a few initial thoughts to me:

1. that organisations could be viewed as art objects and therefore ‘curated’ (as in ‘cared for’ creatively)

2. that organisational development (or growth, transformation, change) could be a kind of artistic practice, both of the humans running the organisation and that of the organisation itself as a nonhuman person; and

3. that organising is a praxis and poiesis which can be explored through and entangled with key contemporary art lenses I’m interested in: institutional materiality, ethical or social sculpture, bureaucratic choreography and embodied knowledges, legal performativity, more-than-human accountability, queer planning and systems decoloniality.

Mainly I want to encounter organisations out there who use ‘art thinking’ as a way of doing governance and operations. And by ‘art thinking’, I mean a form of holistic intelligence where logic, reason, instinct, experience, aesthetics and ‘spirit’-uality (‘spirit’ for me in both the Hegelian and Daoist senses) are used in balance. I’d love for us to walk together for a short time, or indeed for the full 3 years of my guest curatorship. And to have verbal and visual conversations about the types of organisations and organising we need right now in order to bring about a sustainable and equitable future for our sector, our communities and beyond.

Anyway, it’s still early days. But these initial three months will see me zooming up and down the country from here in southwest Scotland to the south coast of England doing studio visits. This will then feed into the 3 year curating framework I have in mind: public events in 2025; organisational residencies in 2026; and an exhibition in 2027… of what?… perhaps a group show of organisations as artists?

Anything is possible!

Write again soon,
Jack Ky

John Hansard Gallery is pleased to announce the appointment of artist Jack Ky Tan as the Guest Curator of Organisational Development from September 2024-27. Through Tan’s practice, the Guest Curatorship provides the opportunity for John Hansard Gallery to support the development of new organisational models, and understand what systemic changes are needed in order to create sustainable art futures.

Jack Ky Tan is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, sculpture, installation and institutional critique. His practice is an ongoing exploration of social justice that blurs the boundaries between, art, law, governance, and consultancy. Visit his website here.

Further updates, events, announcements, resources and documentation of the guest curatorship will be announced in due course.