In conversation: Joy Gregory and Gilane Tawadros

Joy Gregory discusses her exhibition at Arnolfini, Catching Flies with Honey, with curator and writer Gilane Tawadros

Joy Gregory (b.1959, UK) is a graduate of Manchester Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. She has developed a practice which is concerned with social and political issues with particular reference to history and cultural differences in contemporary society. As a photographer she makes full use of the media from video, digital and analogue photography to Victorian print processes. In 2002, Gregory received the NESTA Fellowship, which enabled her the time and the freedom to research for a major piece around language endangerment. The first of this series was the video piece Gomera, which premiered at the Sydney Biennale in May 2010. She is the recipient of numerous awards and has exhibited all over the world showing in many festivals and biennales. Her work included in many collections including the UK Arts Council Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, and Yale British Art Collection. She currently lives and works in London. Her exhibition Catching Flies with Honey is on at Arnolfini from 17th of October to 7th of February 2027.

Gilane Tawadros is Director of Whitechapel Gallery, based in London’s East End. She was formerly the Chief Executive of DACS, a not-for-profit visual artists rights management organization and Co-Director of the Art360 Foundation which she established in 2016 with Mark Waugh. She is a curator and writer and was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London, chaired by Professor Stuart Hall, which, over a decade, achieved an international reputation as a ground-breaking cultural agency at the leading edge of artistic and cultural debates nationally and internationally. She has written extensively on contemporary art and curated a number of international exhibitions. She was the first art historian to be appointed to the Blanche, Edith and Irving Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, USA. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation. Her forthcoming anthology The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global
Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference is published by Bloomsbury.