Jo Melvin is a writer and exhibition maker based in the UK. She is Reader in Fine Art, Archives & Special Collections, Chelsea College, UAL London and director of the Barry Flanagan Estate, London. Jo treats the archive as a lens in order to investigate notions of contemporaneity and destabilise chronological readings of the past, drawing attention to art practices’ current critical concerns. In particular, she utilises performative processes like an archaeology of the future to tease out relationships between the archive—its various memories and its documentation.
Exhibition making is central to her practice. Recent projects include The Feuilleton: I will bear witness, piggy-backing from the Edicola in Spoleto, Macro and Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, designed as a platform for ongoing artisitic exchange. She has worked on a series of exhibitions at Villa Lontana with Vittoria Bonifati in collaboration with the Fondazione Dino ed Ernesta Santarelli. This takes the Santarelli Collection as an archive; the starting point for the curatorial program which creates fluid platforms of encounter between the sculptures and artifacts from the Collection and contemporary art practices. She is also making a film with the city of Spoleto as its starting point. She is currently working on a project with Lucy Lippard and Askeaton Contemporary (Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch) in Ireland. Her latest publications include a newspaper project Barry Flanagan (Von Bartha Gallery, Basel) and Better Read Than Dead: Writings and Interviews 1964-2013 (König Books) with Marja Bloem, Sara Martinetti and Lauren van Haaften-Schick.
Exhibition making is central to her practice. Recent projects include The Feuilleton: I will bear witness, piggy-backing from the Edicola in Spoleto, Macro and Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome, designed as a platform for ongoing artisitic exchange. She has worked on a series of exhibitions at Villa Lontana with Vittoria Bonifati in collaboration with the Fondazione Dino ed Ernesta Santarelli. This takes the Santarelli Collection as an archive; the starting point for the curatorial program which creates fluid platforms of encounter between the sculptures and artifacts from the Collection and contemporary art practices. She is also making a film with the city of Spoleto as its starting point. She is currently working on a project with Lucy Lippard and Askeaton Contemporary (Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch) in Ireland. Her latest publications include a newspaper project Barry Flanagan (Von Bartha Gallery, Basel) and Better Read Than Dead: Writings and Interviews 1964-2013 (König Books) with Marja Bloem, Sara Martinetti and Lauren van Haaften-Schick.