Mr Simon Morrissey

• Qualifications:MA European Cultural Policy & Administration, Universitry of Warwick, 1993; BA (2:1 Hons) History, Universitry of Warwick, 1989 - 1992
• Position:Associate Professor
• Department:ACE - Art and Design
• Telephone:+4411732 85815

About me

Simon Morrissey is a curator, writer and contemporary art consultant whose practice responds to the idea of people and place as both the generator of curatorial narratives and conceptual frameworks through which exhibitions are generated and artists commissioned to create new work.

Morrissey is the Director of Foreground. Established in 2007, Foreground makes new art for new audiences. The organisation delivers an ambitious program that spans commissioning new temporary and permanent artworks in the diverse social and physical structures of communities. Foreground bring diverse partners together to make distinctive projects happen, which often see social communities become artistic collaborators in the creation of new artworks for the place they come from.

In 2019 Morrissey began a long-term commissioning project through apartnership between Foreground and the Science Museum Group, to commissioning an artist to engage with the collection and local communities surrounding the Science Museum's National Collection Centre at Wroughton in Wiltshire to develop a new art work that engages with the four-year development of this major new national cultural asset.

http://foregroundprojects.org.uk

Morrissey's curatorial projects beyond Foreground have been produced in a diversity of contexts including public galleries and museums in the UK, a major international touring exhibition for the British Council and exhibitions for leading commercial galleries. His projects have received funding from major arts institutions and funding organsations including Arts Council England, Henry Moore Foundation, Bristol City Council.

He has written extensively on contemporary artists & edited publications for numerous leading galleries and publishers in Britain and internationally, including Tate Publishing; ICA, London; Camden Art Centre, London; The Barbican Art Gallery, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Musee Des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, France; Kunstverien Frieburg, Germany; Mjellby Konstgard, Hamlstad, Sweden; Universidad Salamanca, Spain; Centro Galego De Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea. He has also contributed widely to UK magazines and periodicals since 1994. 

Document and Location Research Group

In 2018 Morrissey established and convened the research group Document and Location. Developed by academics at the University of the West of England working across multiple disciplines, the group provides a structure through which its members can intervene critically in recent discourses around place and space that have been prevalent across Architecture, Fine Art, Geography, and Photography. Document and Location investigates how our understanding of place is directly formed through how locations are recorded and subsequently narrated by different disciplines.

The groups' research will inform a public programme of exhibitions, discursive events and critical texts delivered in partnership with Foreground.

www.documentandlocation.org

Area of expertise

Conceiving of and curating contemporary art exhibitions

Commissioning new work from artists

Commissioning art in the public realm

Developing methodologies of commissioning where participant and audience groups are involved in co-creation of artwork with artists

Investigating how interactions with people and place can inform curatorial narratives and conceptual frameworks for contemporary art practice

Developing the professional careers and expertise of cultural practioners, especially artists and curators 

Contemporary art criticism and writing on artists' practices

Developing Professional Practice and careers development strategy for under-graduate students of Fine Art

Developing discursive writing practices for under-graduate students of Fine Art

Publications

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