Vivienne Gaskin

Vivienne has twenty years professional practice in contemporary art curation and management. Her specialist interests were in the fields of performance art, digital art and cross-disciplinary art projects. From 1996 - 2006 Vivienne was Director of Live and Digital Art at the ICA London. Within this role, she introduced the genre of curated club nights, blending concept led programme into social events. This directly impacted on a broader uptake of cultural entertainment programming including Late at Tate and V and A Friday Late nights.

Within the field of performance by curatorial focus was on the emerging field of cultural re-enactment. Commissioning work by pioneers in this field including Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard and Rod Dickinson, between 1998 and 2003 this programme of live re-enactments created the foundations for extensive cultural discourse around authorship and cultural memory.

From 2007-2012 Vivienne founded Vivienne Gaskin Cultural Management Ltd. a contemporary artist agency and consultancy. She represented a rostra of artists within two genres; Digital art and musicians extending their practice into the visual arts. Artists included: John Squire, Edwyn Collins, KMA ltd and Gina Czarnecki. She gained extensive exhibition opportunities globally (Italy, USA, Japan, Europe) and generated considerable commissions and art sales.

Since 1996 Vivienne has mirrored her professional practice within academia. At Birkbeck College she was an academic advisor and lecturer on the MA Arts Administration degree programme for six years. She has worked on the events and art degrees at the University of Gloucestershire, at the University of Leeds in the Lifelong learning Department and since 2015 as a Senior Lecturer in Entertainment Management at Leeds Beckett. This current post reflecting her on-going interest in 'culturtainment' and the conflation of high and low culture as a curatorial practice.

Vivienne achieved her PhD titled: "From The East End To The Mall: Issues In Curation, Class and DIY Cultures 991-2000". This thesis examine independent curatorial strategies within the DIY Arts scene in London during the 90s and the effect of their implementation into the Institution for Arts.