Curating with Nature, José Roca and Madeleine Collie

Hosted by Madeleine Collie, Curatorial Practice PhD candidate, Monash University

José Roca discusses the importance of sustainability and collaboration within artistic and curatorial practice. He introduces his long term project, FLORA ars+natura, which informed his initial provocations for the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, scheduled to open in 2022. Within the context of the Biennale, Roca and his curatorium of local curators will expand on themes of extinction and regeneration, with ideas of sustainability and collaboration being integral to the working methods and practices that the Biennale will platform. In addition, Roca reflects on the temporalities of the biennale timeframe and long-term artistic projects, proposing ways of instigating new and regenerating existing artistic relationships of the Biennale’s past.

José Roca is the Artistic Director of the non-for-profit contemporary art space FLORA ars+natura in his home city of Bogotá, Columbia. He was the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art for the Tate, London (2012-2015) and for a decade managed the arts program at the Museo del Banco de la República (MAMU) in Bogotá, establishing it as one of the most respected institutions in Latin America.

Roca was the chief curator of the 8th Bienal do Mercosul (2011) in Porto Alegre, Brazil and co-curator of the Poly/graphic Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2004), the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2006) and the Encuentro de Medellín MDE07 (2007). He was the Artistic Director of Philagrafika 2010, Philadelphia’s international Triennial celebrating print in contemporary art, and served on the awards jury for the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007).

In 2022 Roca will present the 23rd Biennale of Sydney along with a team of curators – the Curatorium – who represent the Biennale of Sydney’s core exhibition partners including: Paschal Daantos Berry, Head of Learning and Participation, Art Gallery of New South Wales; Anna Davis, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art; Hannah Donnelly, Producer, First Nations Programs, Information + Cultural Exchange (I.C.E.) and Talia Linz, Curator, Artspace.

Form x Content is presented by Monash Art, Design & Architecture.
Programmed by Monash University Museum of Art.