Kim Gurney

Kim has been affiliated to universities in South Africa since 2010, leading research projects. She spent a few years in different capacities at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape, focused upon offspaces and understories in one form or another - independent art spaces, artisanal workshops, backstage archives, or other off-sites where counterfactual imagination is at work. She has also worked as a Research Associate for over a decade at African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, and was affiliated to University of Johannesburg’s VIAD Research Centre prior.

Kim recently launched her latest book, Flipside: The Inadvertent Archive, which pays close attention to the backstage, invisible labour of institution-building and curatorial practice. It investigates a 50-year document archive of the Cape’s oldest non-profit arts association (AVA) and brings to life these previously unexplored and uncatalogued stacks, using archival records as source material to assemble an episodic narrative. It is structured thematically taking inspiration from prior architectural records of the historical building that houses AVA, a former house. The reader makes their way, room by room, through interlinked storylines that show how the past, present and future converge.

Kim’s other three books variously link contemporary art, city futures, and the public sphere - her key academic interests. She has developed in her work a long-standing interest in public space as common space, with a special focus on public art, independent art spaces, and institution-building. Her PhD explored art as a vector of value, or how art comes to matter, positing an ecological model that puts public interest first.

Kim was formerly a journalist and news editor, which inflects her writing and experiments with form - See Writing. She has recently produced digital storymaps, an artist book, a photobook, a creative non-fiction book, a visual narrative, and media articles.

Key research outputs: Orcid ID

Selected forums/ public engagements

'Together we can do so much'

Urban graffiti on the steps of Museum Afrika, Newtown
Photo: Kim Gurney

*March 2024: Public discussion with Prof. Premesh Lalu for the launch of ‘Flipside’ at AVA Gallery, Cape Town. Audio available upon request.
*Jan 2024: Moderator for public panel on Community Arts Project (CAP), which forms part of ‘Past Disquiet’ exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA.
*Aug 2023. ‘Panya Routes: From Platform to Plotform’ - Michaelis Lunchtime Lecture, University of Cape Town. Public talk on Panya Routes book.
*May 2023. ‘Publishing as Artistic Practice’ – Stellenbosch Visual Arts Department, Lunchtime Lecture. Public talk on book projects.
*Podcast: ‘Kim Gurney - On Panya Routes’ – People’s Stories and Books, produced by Nancy Richards. Avail on Spotify, 2022.
*2022: Two launch events for ‘Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa’: The first in Cape Town @A4 Arts Foundation in conversation with Neo Muyanga, and the second in Johannesburg (@Stokvel Gallery) with opening speaker Mokena Makeka, both hosted in conjunction with African Centre for Cities. Conversation with Muyanga available here and Makeka’s speech available here
*Oct 2022: Book discussion with Joy Watson on ‘Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa’ (Motto, 2022) hosted by Rosebank Writers. Audio available here
*Sep 2022. Presenter: A paper for the second artistic research conference in Africa hosted by Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg, titled ‘Epistemic Disobedience: Institution-building as artistic practice’ (forthcoming in peer-reviewed proceedings)
*Oct 2021. ‘New Shapes’, Nafasi Academy - thematic residency and lab – exploring alternative ecological frameworks. Research Module: Academic Strategies. Nafasi Art Space, Dar es Salaam, Lecture title: ‘Follow the thing’ (research method).
*Nov 2022. Panellist in the 5th Urban Dialogue hosted by GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi, which featured Panya Routes as a springboard for a larger discussion around cultural infrastructures.
*22 June 2021. Public seminar: ‘Flipside: The Inadvertent Archive’, Centre for Humanities & Department of History Seminar, UWC. Via zoom. Respondent: Dr Valmont Layne.
*Sep 2020. MayDay: Decolonisation, power and the public space, a podcast produced by Bozar, a centre for fine arts in Brussels, Belgium. “How should our streets, statues and monuments reflect the world we live in? Stella Nyanchama Okemwa, from the Belgian NGO Hand in Hand against Racism, is clear: we need to radically rethink how we celebrate power. In this episode, we take inspiration from South Africa, where #RhodesMustFall has created a space for unofficial rolling artwork, where anyone can take the stage. Writer and artist Kim Gurney, who has examined the case up close, shares her experiences with us.” Available on Spotify.
*26-27 Sep 2019, Platform/ Plotform roundtable - convenor. Hosted by African Centre for Cities at Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, Cape Town. See programme here.
*2-19 January 2019, panelist and workshop participant, ‘Africa as concept and method – Decolonisation, Emancipation and Freedom’, Addis Ababa University Alle School of Fine Art & Design, Ethiopia, Hosted by Centre for Humanities Consortium International (CHCI).
*9 February 2019, panelist on #Freespace: ‘Places of Remembrance’, Zeitz MOCAA, V&A Waterfront, Exploring how the notion of memory and heritage can be celebrated in contemporary place making. Curated by Instinct with Zeitz MOCAA, V&A and UCT’s African Centre for Cities.
*28 May 2019, Public talk: ‘From platform to plotform: Artistic thinking in spaces of flux’. African Centre for Cities & Centre for Humanities Research (CHR). Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape.
*10 Dec 2019. Independent art spaces as urban indicators, a public talk at University of Leuven, Belgium. Cities in Development: Art in public spaces. Debate series on critical issues regarding cities of the global South, focusing in particular on how urban dwellers’ agency invents urban futures. Kim Gurney and Sandrine Colard, curator of the Lubumbashi Biennale, and Art Historian at Rutgers University. The talk was the final in a series, which included: Cities of exception, Cities of extraction, The right to the city, Colonial pasts and urban futures.
*30 November 2018, panel participant. Re-imagining as destruction and creation, Norval Art Foundation, UCT’s Centre for Curating the Archive. Re-imagining Museums and Archives - a symposium.
*11 Oct 2018, Seeing pink elephants: Performing the city, opening address at ‘Researching Public Art’ conference, The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Hosted by Public Art Agency Sweden. Available on Youtube
*2-5 July 2018, Invited participant, Transversal writing workshop, co-ordinated by Catharina Gabrielsson and Helene Frichot at KTH Architecture School, Swedish House, Kavalla, Greece.
*5 April 2017, Performing the Present, keynote address at ‘Being (in) Public: Encounters - Outside Place / Inner Space’, international symposium, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Bbeyond in collaboration with Belfast School of Art at Ulster University. Keynote: Performing the Present (2017) - copy of text. This talk makes three moves through time and space to contemplate how art can help make sense of the contemporary moment and re-imagine city futures.
*April 2017, ‘In Focus’ programme, a TV interview by Northern Visions filmed on the occasion of delivering the address, above, at Being in Public, Belfast School of Art, Ulster University.
*July 2015, panel participant, ‘Dead Monuments’ convened by Professor Gavin Younge. Sorbonne, Paris. ECAS 2015. Title of Paper presented: ‘The Disappeared: Missing Artworks Task Force’.