Grant Watson

I am an independent curator based in London and working internationally. Recent activities include 'bauhaus imaginista' a 3 year research project exploring the transnational character and reception of the Bauhaus with exhibitions and discursive events taking place in Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US. I am currently a fellow at BAK, Utrecht, where I am developing the long term interview project How We Behave, which explores radical practices.

I joined the Advanced Practices (Curatorial/Knowledge) PhD programme while working as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (MuHKA), and continued when moving to the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) as Senior Curator and Research Associate. The programme allowed me to explore curatorial ideas with peers from around the world, providing a unique context for transcultural research and the space to develop a new way of working as a curator.

During my time on the programme, I was able to use this forum as a sounding board for several projects. These included the large-scale exhibition "Santhal Family Positions Around an Indian Sculpture" (2008), which addressed left politics and Indian modernist and "Keywords: Art Culture and Society in 1980s Britain" (2014) at Tate Liverpool, using Raymond Williams' book as a source to discuss the cultural politics of that period. My primary PhD research led to the long-term interview project How We Behave (2012, ongoing) which explores the relationship between radical life practice and collective politics, using interviews, edited transcripts and storytelling to produce video portraits. How We Behave has been developed in collaboration with If I Can't Dance I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution (Amsterdam) and has been presented at venues including The Showroom (London), Nottingham Contemporary, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, State of Concept (Athens), The Whitechapel Gallery (London) Extra City (Antwerp) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).