HOW WE CURATE

OUR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

SPILL has been an artist-led festival since its inception in 2007. The creative direction provided by an Artistic Director who is also an artist is incredibly important to the functioning of the festival and wider organisation. Robin Deacon has worked across the fields of performance, video and writing since the mid 1990s. His work came to be known for its innovative approach to the lecture as an art form. His interest in autobiographical storytelling and unusual or untold histories is certainly reflected in his programming and curatorial thinking.

Robin seeks to elevate lectures, talks and dialogues as not being something secondary to a performance, but as a core part of our programming. Having worked in the university and art school sector for many years, Robin Deacon is also invested in the power of education and learning as a tool and a fundamental right. Thinking about and shaping new models for art and creative education will have an increasing importance in our future curatorial direction.

BETWEEN THE MARGINAL AND THE MAINSTREAM

The sixteen years of SPILL’s existence has been marked by huge cultural shifts affecting  how terms such as live art, performance and activism are understood. However we might choose to categorise such forms in a contemporary setting, SPILL will maintain an ongoing interest in work that is as approachable and welcoming to our audiences as it is challenging and complex.

SPILL seeks to curate from an open and expansive viewpoint, with a particular desire to maintain the dialogue between experimental ways of working in performance and wider disciplines or reference points - especially within popular culture. From this perspective, SPILL is very interested in working with artists who have a desire to explore the relationship between marginal and mainstream forms of art making. 

IPSWICH

In recent years, SPILL has looked toward a broader public facing approach that brings art of scale and spectacle to the streets of Ipswich. This is part of a desire to bring accessible art that aims to transform the town in an everyday sense. This approach remains a core element of SPILL’s programming, and will continue to represent a significant part of our commissioned work. The importance of relevance and connection with the town and people of Ipswich informs our programming in a wider sense, in that we are interested in working with artists who wish to connect with not only our international audiences, but also our local ones.

With an ethos of co-creation at its heart, SPILL aims to cultivate the link between artist-led participation and grassroots community organisation, and seek to work with artists who can demonstrate excellence and effectiveness in these areas. Our focus on ‘the local’ is also in the context of an outward facing, international approach that aims to connect the town of Ipswich with artists, communities and cultures from around the world. 

THE QUESTION OF IDENTITY

SPILL seeks to avoid singling out particular groups as part of a diverse ‘strand’, or ‘initiative’ who are obliged to ‘represent’ – rather, we hope that our eclectic programming will inherently contribute to nuanced, curious and generous thinking around questions of identity and heritage, both collective and individual. 

Reflecting a strategy cultivated by our Artistic Director, a key curatorial approach we would like to explore at SPILL is the possibility for a separation of an artist’s identity from the content of their work. For example, just because you are a black artist, we do not assume that your work will be (or should be) about race or racism. Or, just because you are a woman does not mean your work will necessarily centre sex or gender as its subject matter.

This is not to say we are not interested in artists directly interrogating such issues in their work – we absolutely are – but we also believe it is important that the artist themselves be the one who defines the terms by which their work is framed and understood.

ARTIST DEVELOPMENT

Through our regular residencies and wider mentorship initiatives, SPILL’s artist development programme offers not only a point of entry for ‘emerging’ artists, but also a way back in for those ‘re-emerging’ after a time away from making. We are keen to support artists for whom long term research and development is central to their process, supporting ideas and approaches that may require a longer gestation.

We have a particular interest in artists who may be pivoting into a new medium - into, or even away from performance.  We are also invested in supporting and remembering the work or artists who may have been passed by or forgotten by bringing them back into dialogue and relevance.