AGENCY: How do I learn? A lecture by Kimberley Moulton
Join us for the opening evening 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. The symposium will begin with an opening address by Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery Manutaki Director Abby Cunnane, followed by Kimberley Moulton’s lecture How do I learn? and finish with shared kai.
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 I 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 my framework of restoring the spirit and consider deep-time relational ecologies and materialities that guide me in my practice. Sharing examples of recent projects that meet at the intersection of contemporary art, historical archive and place I will consider the way in which I learn 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.
Symposium Schedule
Ngā Mokopuna, 42–50 Kelburn Parade on Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington campus, Wellington. Lectures will be held in Aho Ruruku, the entry level amphitheatre of Ngā Mokopuna, and workshops within the same building. Everyone is welcome to all parts of the symposium programme except the workshops which are fully booked. Kai is provided at noted times.
Friday 14 August
From 5:30pm Arrival
6:00–6:15pm Hosts welcome and opening address Abby Cunnane
6:15–7:30pm How do I learn?: Restoring the Spirit of Collections and Place, an Indigenous space-time curatorial methodology. A lecture by Kimberley Moulton
7:30pm Shared kai (all welcome, please RSVP for numbers)
Saturday 15 August
10am–12.00 How do I learn? A workshop led by Kimberley Moulton with Bridget Riggir-Cuddy
12.30pm–1.30pm Lunch (workshop participants only)
2pm–3pm How do I act?: Modus Operandi. A lecture by Clémentine Deliss
3–3.30pm Afternoon tea (all welcome)
3.30–5.30pm How do I act? A workshop led by Clémentine Deliss with Ruth Buchanan
6pm Beer and chips (all welcome)
7pm–8pm How do I imagine?: Ihi: The poetics of possibility. A lecture by Megan Tamati-Quennell
8.15pm Closing words by Abby Cunnane
Sunday 16 August
11am–1pm How do I imagine? A walk at Ōtari-Wilton Bush
Meet at entrance, 150 Wilton Rd, Wilton, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Biography
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Dr Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman from Australia and a curator and writer. Kimberley 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. She is currently Senior Curator Exhibitions at RISING, the Melbourne international arts festival and most recently held tenure as the Adjunct Curator Indigenous Art Tate London (2023-2026). She has a PhD in curatorial practice from Monash University Melbourne and in 2023 was appointed Curator Emeritus, First Peoples at Museums Victoria.
Working with artists to amplify underrepresented art histories, her 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. Kimberley’s 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 Kimberley 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.