Meet Director and Curator Marcelle Joseph, Marcelle Joseph Projects
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How did your journey as a curator begin, and how long have you been working in this space?
My journey as a curator began in 2011 after I finished a degree in Art Business at Christie’s Education in London and launched Marcelle Joseph Projects, a nomadic curatorial platform that produced four or five exhibitions a year in various locations in the UK from galleries for hire in Shoreditch to stately gardens behind the former royal hunting lodge of King Henry VIII. I’m now over 50 exhibitions in and after finishing my MA in Art History in 2018 with a specialisation in feminist theory, I work exclusively as an independent curator, curating exhibitions for commercial galleries and museums. My curatorial focus has largely been the exploration of the performativity of gender by female-identifying and queer artists with material-led practices.
You’re widely recognized for championing women and queer artists. What sparked that focus for you, and how has it evolved over time?
The reason why I champion women artists is to explore my own subjectivity as a woman in this world and to redress the gender imbalance in the art world. Over time, I have embraced the fluidity of gender across the spectrum and resisted ingrained gender binaries that disenfranchise women and queer people. What I’m most interested in achieving across all my activities – whether it be curating, collecting or patronage – is the representation and support of artists who have been marginalised by the patriarchal canon. At the end of the day, I want to platform and invest in excellence, and excellence has no gender, race or class.
What words of wisdom would you offer to emerging curators trying to find their voice in today’s art world?
I started out working in a very DIY fashion, which I highly recommend. Back in 2011 and 2012, I had to find the venue for the exhibition, choose the artists, write theexhibition text, promote the exhibition, organise the transport, installation and photography of the artworks, and sell the work. I curated shows in so many different non-traditional spaces from a disused workshop in London’s Diamond District to private members’ clubs and country house hotels. I learned so much by doing and having to adapt to each new space. In terms of finding your voice, I recommend viewing as many exhibitions as you can, visiting as many artists’ studios as you can and reading as much as you can in your field of expertise or chosen research area.
If you could select three works from the Aotearoa Art Fair for your personal collection, what would they be—and what draws you to them?
I call my collection a “collection of conversations” as almost all the artworks in my collection were made by artists in my network or acquired from gallerists I know, respect and admire. So I would firstly choose one of the works from the Sanderson booth at the fair as they are showcasing women artists and Sanderson is run by a dear friend of mine, Lydia Cowpertwait. We co-curated a large group exhibition in London in 2013, featuring the work of 59 women artists from the collections of seven women collectors.
I would choose the painting Un-gardenesque (2024) by Molly Timmins, an artist of Māori heritage who uses the garden as her motif to question the colonial influence over both the garden and the history of painting as well as the way in which women have historically existed in these spaces within Aotearoa in the last century. I love the way this artist uses her own matrilinear biography in her practice. Her grandmother owned a Bromeliad business, which her mother runs to this day. Given the world we live in today that is always on the brink of ecological disaster, this return to nature in Timmins’ work is a place for restorative healing.
Image: Molly Timmins, Un-gardenesque, 2024
My second choice is a work from mothermother, a gallery in the Young section of the fair, as I love to support emerging galleries. It is a wall-based silicone and resin sculpture that depicts a pair of gendered breasts, complete with nipples that jut out from the work’s Perspex casement, begging to be touched by the viewer. Titled Canons and made by Caitlin Devoy in 2024, this work jibes with my curatorial focus on identity politics and embodied lived experience. I love the artist’s use of humour and tactility to subversively examine sexist and binary attitudes to gender and bodies.
Image: Caitlin Devoy, Canons, 2024
My third choice is a ceramic sculpture by Virginia Leonard titled Urn 4 (2024) as I am drawn to material-led practices and absolutely adore ceramics. I love when you can see the artist’s hand in the making of an artwork. This work is presented by the Gow Langsford Gallery.
Image: Virginia Leonard, Urn 4, 2024
Looking ahead, what projects or exhibitions are on your radar for 2025?
In terms of visiting museum exhibitions, I look forward to visiting the Helen Chadwick exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire in the UK and the Ithell Colquhoun exhibition at Tate Modern. I will be in New York in May so I look forward to visiting the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the MoMA and the Amy Sherald exhibition at the Whitney. I am hoping to visit the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil in September. Fingers crossed! Otherwise, I have the third edition of the residency I co-founded and run coming up also in September 2025 in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France. Called the GIRLPOWER Residency, it offers three female-identifying or non-binary artists the chance to research, reflect and make work for one month in the rural countryside, outside the demands and distractions of studio life in a big city.
Featured Image: Independent curator and collector Marcelle Joseph at home in Ascot, UK with an artwork by Samara Scott. Photo: Gabrielle Cooper.
