Author: Guy Armitage

Sook-Kyung Lee is Director of The Whitworth and Professor of Curatorial Practices at the University of Manchester. She was previously Senior Curator, International Art at Tate Modern (2012–2023) and Curator at Tate Liverpool (2007–2012). Her major curatorial roles include Curator of the Japan Pavilion (2024) and Commissioner & Curator of the Korean Pavilion (2015) at the Venice Art Biennale, and Artistic Director of the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023). Selected exhibitions and publications include Santiago Yahuarcani: The Beginning of Knowledge (2025), Yuko Mohri: Compose (2024), and Nam June Paik (2019).

Lee serves on Turner Prize 2026 juries and several advisory boards internationally, and her curatorial and directorial practice focuses on exhibition and collection policy, community-led and audience-oriented museum practices, and global art histories.

Image: courtesy of Gwangju Biennale Foundation.

Tabish Khan is an art critic, writer, speaker, podcaster, and curator who passionately believes in making art accessible to everyone. He visits and writes about hundreds of exhibitions a year, covering everything from the major blockbusters to the emerging art scene in London and beyond. He writes regularly for Londonist and FAD and has written for Artsy, Elephant, and the New York Observer.

He is co-host of the podcast The Good, The Bad and The Arty and has judged many prizes, including one at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Tabish is a trustee of the prestigious City & Guilds of London Art School and Discerning Eye, which hosts an annual exhibition featuring hundreds of works. He is an honorary trustee of ArtCan, a non-profit arts organisation supporting artists through profile-raising activities and exhibitions. He is also a critical friend of UP Projects that brings contemporary art to public spaces.

Joe Hill is Director and CEO of Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). Previously, he served as Director and CEO of Towner Eastbourne from 2018 to 2026, where he led a major transformation of the gallery, growing audiences to over 200k annually. During his tenure, Towner was named Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2020 and hosted the Turner Prize 2023, generating an additional £16 million in economic benefit for Eastbourne. He also led the development of a major Levelling Up-funded arts and environment project at Black Robin Farm in the South Downs. Joe is a member of the Turner Prize 2026 jury and contributes to national conversations around culture, placemaking and regeneration.

Prior to Towner, Joe was Director of Focal Point Gallery, where he led the acclaimed Radical ESSEX research and place-making initiative. Originally trained as an artist, he has held curatorial roles at Camden Art Centre, Firstsite and as part of the Venice Biennale.

Ekow Eshun OBE is an award-winning author and curator, renowned for his multifaceted contributions to contemporary culture. Described by Vogue as “the most inspired – and inspiring – curator in Britain”, he has staged acclaimed exhibitions internationally and was awarded the Association for Art History‘s Curatorial Prize 2023.

A trailblazer in British culture, Eshun made history as the first Black head of a major UK arts institution, serving as the director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. As Chairman of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he leads one of the world’s most significant public art projects. His writing, featured in outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, and Vogue, reflects his expansive intellectual vision.

Hailed as “a cultural polymath” by the Guardian, Eshun was the first Black editor of a major UK magazine, helming the former men’s magazine, Arena. He is the author of several books including The Strangers, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Black Gold of the Sun, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University.

Jeremy Deller (b.1966, London; lives and works in London). Deller has been producing projects over the past three decades which have influenced the conventional map of contemporary art. He won the Turner Prize in 2004 and represented Britain in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.

In 2025, Jeremy presented ‘The Triumph of Art‘ as part of the National Gallery‘s Bicentenary celebrations – a major nationwide project which culminated in a procession and a party outside the National Gallery. Films include: Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (with Nicholas Abrahams) (2006), Everybody in the Place (2018) and Putins Happy (2019).

Dr. Katrina M. Brown is a highly respected curator and until recently founding Director of The Common Guild, the leading not-for-profit visual arts organisation based in Glasgow which has presented an internationally respected programme of artists’ projects, events and exhibitions since 2007. Under her direction, The Common Guild has worked with leading international artists including Roni Horn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Roman Ondak, Thomas Demand, Carol Bove, Katinka Bock and Nicole Wermers, and commissioned ambitious live and site-specific projects across Glasgow – from synchronised swimming performances and outdoor plays to a 2023 programme placing new work by five artists across eleven of the city’s public libraries.

Alongside her work with The Common Guild, Katrina has led major partnership projects across Scotland:

• Director of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art in 2010 and 2012, commissioning major public works including Susan Philipsz’s Lowlands and Jeremy Deller’s Sacrilege
• Associate Curator of Generation: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland (2014), a nationwide partnership between the National Galleries of Scotland, Glasgow Life and Creative Scotland
• Associate Curator at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art on the Art Fund International scheme (2007–2011), developing the city’s collection of international contemporary art

In 2011, Katrina was awarded an Honorary Degree (D.Litt.) by the University of Glasgow in conjunction with The Glasgow School of Art for her contribution to the arts in Scotland. She has served as a judge of the Turner Prize, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards for Artists, and the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, and is currently a trustee of Art Fund.

Before founding The Common Guild, Katrina was Curator and Deputy Director at Dundee Contemporary Arts and Exhibitions Curator at Tate Liverpool. She began her career on the committee of artist-run Transmission Gallery, Glasgow.

Louisa Buck is a writer and broadcaster on contemporary art. She is a Contributing Editor and London Contemporary Art Correspondent for The Art Newspaper and a regular reviewer and commentator on BBC radio and TV.

Her articles have appeared in publications ranging from the Guardian and Vogue to Frieze and Artforum.

She is the author of a number of catalogue essays for institutions including Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA London, MCA Australia and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Her books include Moving Targets 2: A User’s Guide to British Art Now (Tate 2000); Market Matters: The Dynamics of the Contemporary Art Market (Arts Council England 2004) and Owning Art: The Contemporary Art Collector’s Handbook (co-authored with Judith Greer) (Cultureshock Media 2006). Commissioning Contemporary Art: A Handbook for Curators, Collectors and Artists was published by Thames & Hudson in October 2012 and in 2016 she authored ‘The Going Public Report’ commissioned by Museums Sheffield.

Louisa was a judge for the 2005 Turner Prize and is a founding member of The Gallery Climate Coalition.

Maria Balshaw is a museum leader, curator and writer. As Director of Tate from 2017 to 2026, she helped engage broader audiences with a programme based on artistic boldness, inclusivity and equity. Her final exhibition at Tate, Tracey Emin: A Second Life, is one of the most successful contemporary art shows in Tate’s history.

Before joining Tate, Balshaw was Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester; Director of Manchester City Galleries; and Director of Culture for Manchester City Council. She was a lecturer and research fellow at the University of Birmingham (1997-2002) and the University of Northampton (1993-1997).

Maria holds a Masters and DPhil from the University of Sussex. In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to the arts. She is the author of many books and articles, most recently Gathering of Strangers: Why Museums Matter (Tate, 2024).

Pita Arreola is Head of Programmes at arebyte, leading the organisation’s artistic programme. With fifteen years of experience in the arts, she has worked closely with creatives to develop experimental projects that critically examine the social and cultural impact of emerging technologies.

Based in London, she is also the Co-Founder of Off Site Project, a curatorial platform supporting new media talent. Since 2017, Pita has collaborated with over 200 artists from across the globe, and from 2021 to 2024 she served as Curator of Digital Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is co-editor of Digital Art: 1960s–Now (V&A, Thames & Hudson, 2024), a book tracing the histories and evolution of digital arts.

Alayo Akinkugbe is an independent writer and curator. She is the author of Reframing Blackness (published by #Merky Books in 2025) and the founder of A Black History of Art, a platform highlighting Black artists, sitters, curators and thinkers from art history and the present day.

She is also the host of the A Shared Gaze podcast. Akinkugbe has worked with institutions and contributed to publications internationally, including serving on the advisory panel for African Artists: From 1882 to Now (Phaidon, 2021), and receiving a curatorial research grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition Entangled Pasts: Art, Colonialism and Change.

Her writing has appeared in publications such as AnOther Magazine, Dazed, Tate Etc. and The World of Interiors.