FEEDBACK MEETING FOR ARTISTS AND CURATORS
with Yvonne Billimore & Jussi Koitela
Thu 17 October, from 12 to 4 p.m.

 

Yvonne Billimore & Jussi Koitela are guests of Temporary Gallery's residency program.

Cologne-based artists and curators have the opportunity to meet Jussi Koitela or Yvonne Billimore personally, present their own work or projects and receive feedback. Individual registration until Wednesday, 16 October at info@temporarygallery.org.

Yvonne Billimore’s interdisciplinary practice facilitates situations for collective learning, exchange and experiences with particular attention to feminist and ecological practices. Alongside Jussi Koitela, she co-curated the exhibition "The pleasures we choose" for the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. In addition to her freelance curatorial practice, Yvonne is the artistic director of Bioart Society, a Helsinki-based association developing, producing and facilitating activities around art and natural sciences with an emphasis on biology, ecology and life sciences. From 2019 to 2023 Yvonne was associate curator at Frame Contemporary Art Finland, focusing on the "Rehearsing Hospitalities" public programme. Previously they worked as co-artistic director of ATLAS Arts (maternity cover 2021–22) on the Isle of Skye; and programme manager at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop (2015–18) in rural Aberdeenshire—both of which host residencies, projects and activities responding to the complexities of their locales.

Jussi Koitela (born 1981) is working as an independent curator and Director of M-Cult in Helsinki. Between 2019-2024 he was Head of Programme at Frame Contemporary Art Finland, where he curated "Rehearsing Hospitalities" public programme together with Yvonne Billimore. His curatorial work entangles art, embodied collaborative research methods, hospitality and materiality in various forms of exhibitions and ways of producing knowledge. He is currently curator of "The pleasures we choose"  Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia in 2024 with Yvonne Billimore and Survival Kit “Measures” organised by Latvian Center of Contemporary Art, Riga, 2024.
Selected earlier curatorial work: "Conflicting Relations" at Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York, "Editorial Tables: Reciprocal Hospitalities" at The Showroom, London, "Secured - Politics of Bodies and Space" at Arsi Vantaai Art Museum, Vantaa. "Performing the Fringe" at Konsthall C and Pori Art Museum, "Entangling Matter and Meaning/Intra-Structures - Monster of the Seven Lakes" at Treignac Projet, "Mattering City" at SixtyEight Art Institute, "City Agents" at Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art, "Skills of Economy Sessions" at Finnish Theatre Academy, Baltic Circle Festival and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, and "Untitled (two takes on crises) - You Must Make Your Death Public" at de Appel Art Centre.
He has edited "Rehearsing Hospitalities Companions 1-4" published by Archive Books with Yvonne Billimore, and "The pleasures we choose" published by k.verlag, 2024. "Falling In — Movements and Becoming in Curatorial Research" with Dahila El Broul and Ksenia Kaverina, published by Mousse Publishing, 2024. In 2015/2016 Koitela participated in the De Appel curatorial programme.

About the residency program:
It has become a declared, if often only half-heartedly pursued, goal of cultural institutions to question and renew their own structures with regard to diversity. However, diversity must not just be a temporary program or a hip agenda, but must go deeper. The question must not only be who gets access to cultural education and its institutions, but who is even able to consider cultural and/or creative work as a career perspective.

Although so-called "art brut" – art by people with a mental illness or a mental disability – is very well established and highly valued, "art brut" artists and their artworks are excluded from the usual art scene: "art brut" functions as a separate area of the art world with its own exhibitions in which only "art brut" artists participate. As a result, they very rarely meet with artists without disabilities. Although the intention behind "art brut" exhibitions is certainly positive and worthy of support, there is no real inclusion here – the artworks are "isolated" in separate exhibitions instead of being included in exhibitions of artists without illness or disability. In order to address this problem in the long term, the Temporary Gallery. Centre for contemporary art in Cologne, would like to implement an idea in 2024 that focuses on empowerment and inclusion at a deeper level: a residency program for cultural workers – in cooperation with several partners from Cologne – with the main goal: to counteract the exclusion of so-called "outsider art" in the long term to deal with this problem in the long term, the Temporary Gallery. Center for Contemporary Art in Cologne, initiated a project that focuses on empowerment and inclusion on a deeper level: a residency program for cultural workers with the main goal: to counteract the exclusion of so-called "Outsider Art" in the long term.

The aim of the program is to invite several international artists to Cologne. The guests visit partner institutions and meet artists in their studios. In addition, individual "feedback sessions" are offered, talks lasting around 1–2 hours, for which artists can register. The residents also present their work at an event in the Temporary Gallery.

We successfully tested the project in 2023 – thanks to the support of the Bezirksregierung Köln – with the Kunsthaus KAT18 as a partner institution. We hosted the collective Sour Grass from Barbados, Hubert Gromny from Berlin and Luiza Proença from Rio de Janeiro in Cologne. The 2024 residencies included Gilly Karjevsky from Berlin and Alberta Whittles, Glasgow. In 2024, the project will be continued thanks to the support of the City of Cologne (funding program: “Culture – Diversity”) and expanded to include new partner institutions. We hope that the project will also contribute to strengthening the artistic scene in Cologne in the long term. After all, better networking with international artists expands the opportunities for artists based in the city to take part in exhibitions outside Cologne.

 

 

Bild
The pleasures we choose, Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2024.
Photo: Ugo Carmeni / Frame Contemporary Art Finland