Dr Jo Melvin

Biography

Jo Melvin is Professor in Fine Art and Feminisms at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL, London and Director and Curator of the Barry Flanagan Estate. Recent projects include The Feuilleton I will bear witness: Piggy-backing from the Edicola, Spoleto, Umbria and MACRO, Roma, Italy 2021, ‘Imagine Being Here Now’ with Lucy R. Lippard and Askeaton Contemporary, (2021), Barry Flanagan Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019) and Publication Scaffold, Dublin (2019). In 2018 Melvin started collaborating with Vittoria Bonifati to form a series of exhibitions, publications and events at Villa Lontana, Rome, PAINTING STONE, (2021) MEMORY GAME (2020) MACHISMO (2019), ARCHEOLOGI THE METADATA OF VILLA LONTANA (2018) and SCULPTURELESS SCULPTURE, (2018). Publications include: ‘Aesthetics of Silence’, Picturing the Invisible, UCL (2022); Sophie Bouvier-Ausländer ‘An Archaeology of the Future’ Lausanne and London, (2021), and ‘Between the Eyes Painting. Gene Beery: Para-Visual Painter of Word Signs’ Gene Beery, FriArt, Fribourg Switzerland (2019).

Melvin gives attention to practices of women by using ‘forgotten histories’ (archives, memory, oral histories) as material for new curatorial research. This methodology enables re-readings of colonialism, and de-coloniality including decolonisation, imperialism (recent and ancient), as well as queering our critiques and questions of personal identity.