Tessa Giblin

Tessa Giblin is Director of Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of

Edinburgh, a position she assumed in November 2016. Talbot Rice Gallery is the art gallery of the University of

Edinburgh. It is dedicated to furthering curatorial research – with exhibitions

of Lucy Skaer, Jesse Jones and Samson Young in 2018/19 who are given access to

the University’s collections and research capacity – but also in the creation

of conceptual group exhibitions, exploring ideas around frontiers in the age of

Brexit, raising the volume on female self-empowerment, and the idea of the

‘extended mind’ finding its nucleus in contemporary art. With a 19th

century gallery and a contemporary white cube to fuel its engine, Talbot Rice

Gallery is exploring what the University of Edinburgh can contribute to

contemporary art production today. Tessa Giblin is also Commissioner and

Curator of Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2017, with the artist Jesse Jones.

From 2006 – 2016 she was Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre, Dublin

where she curated and lead the visual arts program within a busy

multi-disciplinary arts centre, consisting of two theatres and a gallery. In 2015

she was Guest Curator of the steirischer herbst festival exhibition, Graz,

Austria, where she presented the group exhibition Hall of

Half-Life over four venues. At Project Arts Centre she curated

numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Riddle of the Burial

Grounds which toured to Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp in 2016, and made

commissioning new work a hallmark of her exhibitions. Tessa Giblin

now lives and works in Edinburgh with her family. She was raised in

Christchurch, New Zealand, where she attended the Canterbury University School

of Fine Arts, participated in de Appel’s Curatorial Training Program in

Amsterdam, and began her curatorial formation through the network of artist-run

spaces across Aotearoa.