Articulation adjudicators

Sam Ayre

Sam Ayre is an artist who specialises in participatory projects, creatively engaging groups of people in exploring their opinions and ideas, encouraging radical imagining, embracing tangents, conviviality and mistake-making. Their favourite medium is conversation. They have a supporting studio practice that expands upon these ideas and focuses on our relationship to the natural world, landscape and materials through wooden sculptural furniture, landscape painting and drawing. They have delivered commissions for Turner Contemporary, De La Warr Pavilion, Towner, Tate Modern, Freelands Foundation, Art Night London and Charleston House amongst others and exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery.

Verity Babbs

Verity Babbs is an art historian, presenter, and comedian. She has written for the Guardian, Artnet News, and Hyperallergic and has worked on filmed projects for Tate, London Art Fair, and the National Film & Television School. She is the founder and host of Art Laughs art-themed comedy nights which have brought stand-up and improv events to the National Gallery, Royal Museums Greenwich, and Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. Her ‘1 Sentence Answer’ videos have been shared by BBC Upload and BBC 2. She was named one of HistoryExtra’s ‘30 Under 30’ in 2024. She took part in Articulation in 2015.

Simeon Barclay

Simeon Barclay, artist, spent his formative years employed as a machine operative whilst also being engaged in various youth subcultural movements across the UK in the 90’s. Channelling those alternative modes of expression, he would later attend art school. Barclay draws on a diverse visual language activating objects, that with humorous undertones, come to express the paradoxes and ambiguities of defining ourselves within culture and tradition. He works and lives.

Shahidha Bari

Shahidha Bari is an academic, critic and broadcaster. She is a Professor at the University of the Arts London, a presenter of BBC Radio 3's nightly Free Thinking programme, also known as the Arts and Ideas podcast, and the occasional host of BBC Radio 4's Front Row. She’s the author of “Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes” (2019), the winner of The Observer Anthony Burgess Arts Journalism Prize 2016 and has been a judge for the Forward Poetry Prizes and the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Prize. She writes for The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement and Frieze magazine.

Jane Bhoyroo

Jane Bhoyroo is Principal Keeper at Leeds Art Gallery. She was previously the founding Producer for Yorkshire Sculpture International, a unique collaboration between – Henry Moore Institute, Leeds Art Gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park where she realised sculpture commissions with Huma Bhabha and Ayse Erkmen. Previous roles include: Sculpture Curator for the Arts Council Collection, Director of S1 Artspace, Visual Arts Relationship Manager for Arts Council England and working with Anthony Reynolds Gallery. She studied on the De Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam and has an MA in Art History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art. She is the Chair of Transform Festival in Leeds and originalprojects; in Great Yarmouth.

Fionnuala Boyd & Les Evans

Fionnuala Boyd & Les Evans met at art school in 1962 and started working together in 1968. They have exhibited widely in commercial and public galleries and have work in British and international museums. They spent a year travelling in USA 1977-78 as Bicentennial Fellows and have returned to America many times since. In 1982 they moved to Milton Keynes as artists in residence. In 1991 they were artists with the Royal Geographical Society’s Brunei Rainforest Project. They have worked on a number of public commissions. Their paintings are based on photography. They also exhibit photographs, often on a very large scale, but they are currently working on paintings.

Alice Dodds

Alice Dodds is a historian of modern British art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in women’s environmental utopianism in the Arts and Crafts movement. She has worked with the William Morris Society and Hammersmith Climate Carnival on young people’s engagement with the environment through art, and has spoken internationally on visual culture and ecology in the 19th and 20th centuries.

William Feaver

William Feaver (Bill) was Art Critic of The Observer from 1975-1997 and was named Critic of the Year in 1984. He has written widely on both historic and contemporary art. Among his many books are ‘The Art of John Martin’; ‘Masters of Caricature’; ‘When We Were Young: Two Centuries of Childrens’ Book Illustration’; and Pitmen Painters’, which was subsequently turned into a major stage play by Lee Hall. He has curated many exhibitions, most notably ‘Lucian Freud’ at Tate Britain in 2002. More recently he has written the acclaimed two-volume biography of Lucian Freud, and a major monograph on Frank Auerbach, for whom Bill became a weekly sitter in 2002, continuing until the painter’s recent death.

Dr Stephen Feeke

Stephen Feeke is an independent art historian, curator and art adviser. He specialises in sculpture and amongst recent ventures was the commissioning of new work for a major public realm project in Paddington Square, London (2024). His PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art focussed on Barbara Hepworth’s bronzes and he has written and lectured on aspects of Hepworth’s work around the world. He co-authored the catalogue accompanying the recent Hepworth exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2022) and has contributed a number of articles to the Burlington Magazine, Sculpture Journal and Museums Journal. He was previously Director at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, and a curator at the Henry Moore Institute.

Dr Susan Foister OBE

Susan Foister was formerly Deputy Director, Director of Public Programmes and Partnerships and Curator of Early Netherlandish and German Painting at the National Gallery. She has curated numerous exhibitions including ‘Holbein in England’ at Tate Britain and ‘Dürer’s Journeys’ at the National Gallery. Susan has championed the development of the National Gallery’s nationwide partnerships and its ambitions for its learning programmes, including Articulation.

Keith Harrison

Keith Harrison’s art practice is involved with the physical transformation of materials, to unpredictable effect, in a series of process-based public experiments. Previous works include launching a full-size clay Rover 75 off a monumental ramp in Cannock Chase Forest, submitting a ceramic soundsystem to the grindcore onslaught of Napalm Death and a live choreographed interruption in the life of Preston Bus Station involving 32 buses performing to a soundtrack by Preston Field Audio. Harrison was previously a Gasworks' International Fellow at KHOJ, Delhi, Ceramics Resident at the V&A Museum. He is currently Research Professor at Bath School of Art, Film and Media and Guest Professor at KHiO, Norway.

Hannah Healey

Hannah Healey is an art history researcher and writer, a community gardener, a baker and rambler. Her PhD research at the Courtauld Institute of Art looks to art and politics in 1970s Britain and how members of Artists for Democracy enacted solidarity through art. She has worked on contemporary art exhibitions and publications with Marina Abramović, Modern Art Oxford, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Afterall and the Royal Academy of Arts. She also works on the Courtauld Institute’s Widening Participation projects, seeking to enrich the field of art history by broadening access to art historical study.

Joe Hill

Joe Hill has been the Director and CEO of Towner Eastbourne since 2018. During this time, the gallery has grown its audience significantly, now welcoming over 200,000 visitors annually. Under Joe’s leadership, Towner was named Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2020 and hosted the Turner Prize in 2023 as part of its Centenary celebrations. He is currently overseeing a Levelling Up-funded project to create a new arts, heritage and environment centre at Black Robin Farm in the South Downs National Park. Joe previously co-chaired the South East Creative Economy Network, supporting the region’s cultural and creative industries. Before joining Towner, Joe was Director of Focal Point Gallery in Southend, where he led the Radical ESSEX project, which explored and reinterpreted the county’s cultural history.

Tatyana Kalaydjian Serraino

Tatyana Kalaydjian Serraino is an Art Historian, Content Creator, and Presenter of Italian, Danish, and Armenian descent. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Art History from John Cabot University in Rome, and an MA in Arts & Culture Management from Rome Business School. Tatyana is the creator of About Art by Tatyana, a platform with half a million followers that makes Art History accessible through TikTok shorts, YouTube documentaries, and online courses. She has authored scholarly articles and has appeared on podcasts and television as both a host and expert guest. Tatyana is an Articulation Alumni.

Benjamin Kandler

Benjamin Kandler is an art market expert with broad experience in the fine art, tech and heritage sectors, specializing in contemporary and new media art. A History of Art graduate from Goldsmiths University, he now consults at the intersection of art, technology, and culture. Previously, he was Director at a London gallery as well as Phillips Auctioneer leading digital art projects across Europe, Asia, and North America, working with pioneering artists and heritage brands like Asprey and Bugatti. In 2022, he set the auction record for Vera Molnar, and his expertise has been featured in major publications such as the Financial Times. Benjamin is a 2017 Articulation Alumni.

Theresa Lola

Theresa Lola is a poet and writer and was appointed the Young People’s Laureate for London in the year 2019-20. In 2018 she was awarded the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. In 2022 her poem ‘Equilibrium’ from her first poetry collection was added to OCR’s GCSE English Literature syllabus. She holds an Mst in Creative Writing from University of Oxford. She has previously been commissioned by Selfridges, Rimowa, and National Gallery. Her second poetry collection Ceremony for the Nameless (2024) is published by Penguin.

Pascal Matthias

Pascal Matthias is a fierce advocate for educational and organisational reform; he is a strategic thinker, consultant and public speaker and the Associate Vice President for EDI and Social Justice at the University of Southampton. Focussing on organisational awareness as well as individual and collective accountability, Pascal vigorously seeks to reimagine and restructure current frameworks and metrics in the workplace. He strives towards making Higher Education more inclusive, unified and equal, regardless of race, colour or ethnicity or protected characteristics. He is an independent NHS Equality, Diversity and Inclusion consultant and co-founded FACE (Fashion Academics Creating Equality) in 2020. He is a TEDx Speaker, and public speaker on topics around compassionate conversations, social justice and accountability.

Dr Catriona McAra

Dr Catriona McAra is a lecturer in modern and contemporary art history and honorary curatorial fellow at the University of Aberdeen. Catriona previously held senior curatorial positions at University of St Andrews and Leeds Arts University where her exhibitors included Yoko Ono, Mieke Bal and Ilana Halperin. She was awarded her doctorate from University of Glasgow and undertook post-doctoral research at University of Edinburgh. She is a leading authority on feminist-surrealism having published books on Dorothea Tanning (Routledge, 2017) and Leonora Carrington (Manchester University Press, 2022). Catriona is currently writing a third book on Scottish contemporary artist-women (Edinburgh University Press).

Debbie Meniru

Debbie Meniru is a London-based writer and curator. Her writing leans into emotion, anecdote and humour to explore art as a deeply personal experience that reaches far beyond the walls of the gallery. Her words have been published internationally and her text ‘Fried yam in the museum’ is on the syllabus of the MA Curating programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Debbie has curated The Conch at South London Gallery and outdoor installations by Jyll Bradley and Souad Abdelrasoul at the Hayward Gallery. She is currently Assistant Curator of Interpretation at Tate Modern and Tate Britain.

Prof Jennifer Powell

Prof Jennifer Powell is Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and Barber Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham. Prior to this, she was Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge. She is a respected scholar in the field of modern and contemporary art, especially sculpture and exhibition cultures since 1945, an area in which she has published widely.

Jennifer begun her curatorial career with the V&A before taking up the post of Assistant Curator of Modern British Art at Tate Britain in 2010. She was appointed Head of Collections, Programme and Research at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, in 2013, and played a key role in the gallery’s £11.5 million redevelopment project.

Dr Lara Pucci

Dr Lara Pucci is Assistant Professor in Art History at the University of Nottingham. She studied at the University of Bristol and The Courtauld Institute of Art. Before joining Nottingham, she was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Manchester and has since held two fellowships at the British School at Rome. A specialist in the art of twentieth-century Italy, she has published on the visual politics of the Fascist regime, the anti-Fascist resistance, and the Italian Communist Party. She is currently writing a book on Fascist conceptions of the Italian landscape.

Andrea Rose CMG, OBE

Andrea Rose CMG, OBE was Director of Visual Arts at the British Council from 1994-2014, where she was responsible for Britain’s representation at Venice Biennale, commissioning and curating exhibitions by Leon Kossoff, Rachel Whiteread, Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Jeremy Deller and Sarah Lucas among others. As Exhibition Curator, she organised the major series ‘Masters of British Painting’ in partnership with the Museé du Louvre, encouraging new interest in France in many of Britain’s historic painters, including Gainsborough, Turner, Reynolds, Wright of Derby, and culminating in John Constable in 2002 (which she invited Lucian Freud to select). She had organised the first international museum exhibition for Lucian Freud, touring to the USA, France and Germany in 1987-88. She was also responsible for creating new networks for British art overseas, particularly in China and Japan, Russia, India, and the Middle East. In 2013, she signed the first cultural agreement between the UK and North Korea.

Yomi Ṣode

Yomi Ṣode is an award-winning Nigerian-British writer. His debut collection Manorism, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the T S Eliot Prize 2022. Yomi is a Complete Works alumnus and a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. He is the founder of BoxedIn, First Five, The Daddy Diaries, and mentorship programme, 12 in 12.

Dr. Claudine van Hensbergen

Dr. Claudine van Hensbergen is Associate Professor at Northumbria University and has published widely on literature and art. She was UKRI Leadership Fellow for the project “Learning through the Art Gallery: Art, Literature and Disciplinarity” (2019–2023) run in collaboration with The Laing Art Gallery. She continues to engage with The Laing’s collections in work with secondary school pupils, undergraduates and PhD students. Her next publication (for Cambridge University Press) is a study of Aphra Behn's grave in Westminster Abbey, exploring the relationship between England's first professional woman writer and histories of Poet's Corner.