Bundanon

Fleur Watson (PhD) is a curator, design researcher and author.

She is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT University and the founding director of the curatorial practice Something Together. Fleur’s practice is focused on research, exhibitions and programs that ask questions of creative practice’s role in the world today and its agency in responding to the issues that shape contemporary life. She is the author of The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture & Design (Routledge, 2021) and series editor of Editions: Australian Architecture Monographs (Thames & Hudson). Fleur is a Board member for not-for-profit organisation Open House Melbourne and was formerly OHM’s Executive Director and Chief Curator. From 2013–2020, Fleur held the role of Curator and Industry Fellow at RMIT Design Hub Gallery where she co-directed an ambitious exhibition program centred on design experimentation and research. Through 2018–2019, Fleur worked with the Lyon Foundation as executive curator to launch the Lyon Housemuseum Galleries and co-curated the opening exhibition ENTER.

In Residence at Bundanon

During her residency at Bundanon, Watson is researching case studies towards a new publication project provisionally titled New Curatorial Practices for a Blended World. The project explores the following provocation: If we now accept that to simply be in the world is operate in the physical and the digital, then, curatorially, we also need to consider new ‘hybrid’ opportunities for public exhibitions, programmes and cultural production. The rapid expansion of digital cultural and spatial experiences through emerging digital technologies has generated opportunities for increased access for audiences yet these new curatorial and design practices must also interrogate the ethics, inclusivity, and impact of these nascent hybrid worlds.