Karen MacKinnon fell in love with art while travelling around Europe in her early 20s so it is perhaps appropriate that she is now the head of an international art prize.
She became the director of Artes Mundi, which is running its sixth prize and exhibition this year, in July 2013 after a career that has included roles at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea and the Chapter arts centre in Cardiff. And in 2005 she curated the exhibition Somewhere Else Wales at the Venice Biennale.
But she had not always planned to work in the visual arts, having left school aged 16 with few qualifications. She was involved in the Welsh music scene before taking a trip to Europe with her partner, now her husband.
“We went all over Europe and everywhere we stopped, France, German, Austria, Spain and then to North Africa, we just went into museums and discovered art really for the first time and fell in love with it,” she says. “It changed my life and changed the way that I thought about things.”
She returned to her hometown of Swansea and studied art history, with film, philosophy and English literature.
She then volunteered at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, where she became involved in an exhibition, Some Organising Principles, by the film-maker Peter Greenaway that took objects from all over Wales and arranged them in a way that reflected on how museums organise and categorise artefacts.
MacKinnon then studied visual arts and feminism before getting a job at Chapter in 1996 and then Glynn Vivian in 2003.
She says that all through her career she has been interested in how audiences relate to international art. Much of her work at Glynn Vivian was done with its director, Jenni Spencer-Davies, who is also from Swansea.
“Together we developed a focus on how international artwork sits between the gallery and the community, and we also created conversations about the collection,” MacKinnon says. “Glynn Vivian travelled the world collecting art and that is how the gallery came about.”
Art and location
Her work at Glynn Vivian involved international programmes such as a 2008 show called Displaced, which featured 15 Colombian artists.
“All the international shows felt like they were issues and ideas that would engage with a particular location or our collection,” MacKinnon says.
“I’m interested in how you think about curating in different contexts. At Chapter it was very much more curating to an audience of artists, curators and academics whereas the audience at Glynn Vivian was much broader. And then working at the Venice Biennale, the context is an international art audience, and Artes Mundi is different again.”
Artes Mundi is the UK’s biggest arts prize, with £40,000 going to the winner. As an international competition it attracted more than 800 entries from 70 countries, with nine artists shortlisted for this year’s prize, three more than in 2012.
The prize has the loose theme of being for artists who engage with ideas of humanity, social reality and the lived experience. What this means in practice is that many produce work that is socially engaged and political.
“One of things that makes Artes Mundi distinctive is that we don’t shy away from work that is really, really challenging,” MacKinnon says. “We respect artist’s right to have a space where they can speak about things that are difficult to think about in any other discipline. I think that is important.”
This year’s shortlist includes Renata Lucas, Carlos Bunga and Theaster Gates, whose work tackles people’s experiences of urban life.
Sanja Ivekovic, Omer Fast and Renzo Martens also look at the lives of individuals, but more specifically related to media manipulation. And Sharon Lockhart is among those who collaborate with individuals and communities to show the lives of underrepresented and unseen groups.
The fifth Artes Mundi prize was won by Teresa Margolles, who focuses on the widespread violence and murder related to drug-related crime in northern Mexico.
MacKinnon is aware that Artes Mundi artists often tackle difficult subjects but she says she always tries to think about how audiences might react to contemporary art.
“Of course contemporary art can be challenging, but it does not seem to make any sense to alienate an audience,” she says. “When I was at Chapter I remember showing the work of Orlan, the French artist who has had cosmetic surgery. It was a very shocking work, and I would never have shown that at Glynn Vivian.
“You would have been doing it just to shock and actually the work is really meaningful. You would not have been doing the artist or the audience any good, as there would not have been a conversation there.”
Enhancing education
MacKinnon says it is important that audiences connect with international art and one of the ways this can be done is by commissioning artists to work with local communities and to engage with local stories.
“Because I come from a film world and have studied cinema I’m always surprised why contemporary art is so difficult for some people when they will go to the cinema and happily sit and watch a film.
"I think sometimes it’s the building, it’s the grandeur, it’s the status of high art and low culture and those kinds of debates. But by involving artists in the local culture we can hopefully bridge some of those gaps.”
The work of this year’s shortlisted Artes Mundi artists will be shown in the grandeur of the National Museum of Art for 17 weeks from 25 October with the winner announced on 22 January. But one of MacKinnon’s aims is to expand the exhibition to other venues.
“National Museum Cardiff is still our core partner, but we will also be working with other major arts organisations, Chapter and Ffotogallery, and we are looking for other sites in the city as well,” MacKinnon says.
“We have nine artists this time, not six, and we are really looking to develop Artes Mundi as a series of international solo exhibitions across the city.”
MacKinnon also wants to expand the learning element of Artes Mundi and make it more active in the periods when the exhibition is not on, in much the same way that international art events such as the Liverpool Biennial have been doing recently.
“We will continue our important work with schools when the exhibition is on, but will also expand our work all year round with local communities. We’d like to bring artists in to work with communities and bridge the gap between art and education.”
MacKinnon is also hoping the prize can play more of a role in supporting the arts in Wales. She hopes to build on the success of artists such as Bedwyr Williams and Sean Edwards who are internationally known but choose to live and work in Wales.
“There are loads of really good artists here, and there are opportunities for them but I think it is very difficult because we don’t really have a commercial infrastructure, unlike London, Glasgow or Dublin,” MacKinnon says.
“That is very difficult, so artists struggle. They get support from public arts institutions and bodies but where is that long-term support for them in terms of their career?”
Partnerships
One of things MacKinnon would like to do is develop a community of international artists, curators, selectors and judges that work on Artes Mundi that the organisation can turn to for help, support and advice all the time, rather than just when the prize is on display in Cardiff.
As a venue-less organisation, Artes Mundi already has strong relationships with a range of organisations throughout Wales and beyond.
“It is about developing more partnership working, more collaboration and more long-term relationships with everyone we work with,” MacKinnon says, who feels this is important in difficult financial times.
Artes Mundi also has a strong set of relationships that it has developed through its fundraising. It gets some support from the Arts Council of Wales, Cardiff City Council and a range of other funders.
“We bring in money from all kinds of sources, some international, corporate, which is great because I think it’s really good for the prize and for Wales, but it’s tough,” MacKinnon says.
Moving forward, MacKinnon hopes to deepen the relationship Artes Mundi has with its partners, funders and supporters to ensure that the prize and exhibition continue to flourish. She seems someone who is naturally collaborative and enjoys this way of working.
“I think it is a nice time to join the organisation as we have got a very established art prize and all our partners work really well and are really supportive but if we can get more out of that, it would be exciting,” she says.
“I like to think of an arts organisation as a family and a community with extended communities and families. If we can create an international community and family that can benefit this culture as well as the artists that would be really important.”
This year’s Museums Association annual conference and exhibition takes place in Cardiff on 9-10 October. It is being held in the Wales Millennium Centre.
Karen MacKinnon is the first Welsh director of the Artes Mundi international visual arts prize and exhibition. She joined the organisation in July 2013.
She has worked as an international curator based in Wales for the past 16 years and has had roles at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea and the Chapter arts centre in Cardiff.
She also curated a 2005 exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which included the work of Peter Finnemore, Laura Ford and Paul Granjon and a residency by Bedwyr Williams.
MacKinnon was a judge for the 2012 BBC programme The Exhibitionists, which gave people with no art experience the opportunity to curate an exhibition at National Museum Cardiff.
She was born in Swansea and has an MA in visual arts and feminism.
Artes Mundi was created in 2002 to support contemporary visual artists from around the world whose work engages with people’s lives. The organisation’s biennial exhibition and prize takes place in Cardiff and the winner receives £40,000, making it the UK’s largest art prize.
This year’s nine-strong shortlist was chosen from 800 nominations by Artes Mundi director Karen MacKinnon and two selectors: Adam Budak, an independent curator based in Washington, DC, and Sabine Schaschi, the curator of Museum Haus Konstructiv in Zurich.
The nine shortlisted artists for this year’s prize are: Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Karen Mirza and Brad Butler (UK), Omer Fast (Israel), Theaster Gates (US), Sanja Ivekovic (Croatia), Ragnar Kjartansson (Iceland), Sharon Lockhart (US), Renata Lucas (Brazil) and Renzo Martens (the Netherlands).
The winner of the fifth Artes Mundi prize in 2012 was Teresa Margolles, an artist who focuses on the widespread violence and murder related to drug-related crime in northern Mexico.
Artes Mundi is supported by a range of funders, including the Arts Council of Wales, Cardiff City Council, the Colwinston Charitable Trust, the Myristica Trust and the Waterloo Foundation.
She became the director of Artes Mundi, which is running its sixth prize and exhibition this year, in July 2013 after a career that has included roles at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea and the Chapter arts centre in Cardiff. And in 2005 she curated the exhibition Somewhere Else Wales at the Venice Biennale.
But she had not always planned to work in the visual arts, having left school aged 16 with few qualifications. She was involved in the Welsh music scene before taking a trip to Europe with her partner, now her husband.
“We went all over Europe and everywhere we stopped, France, German, Austria, Spain and then to North Africa, we just went into museums and discovered art really for the first time and fell in love with it,” she says. “It changed my life and changed the way that I thought about things.”
She returned to her hometown of Swansea and studied art history, with film, philosophy and English literature.
She then volunteered at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, where she became involved in an exhibition, Some Organising Principles, by the film-maker Peter Greenaway that took objects from all over Wales and arranged them in a way that reflected on how museums organise and categorise artefacts.
MacKinnon then studied visual arts and feminism before getting a job at Chapter in 1996 and then Glynn Vivian in 2003.
She says that all through her career she has been interested in how audiences relate to international art. Much of her work at Glynn Vivian was done with its director, Jenni Spencer-Davies, who is also from Swansea.
“Together we developed a focus on how international artwork sits between the gallery and the community, and we also created conversations about the collection,” MacKinnon says. “Glynn Vivian travelled the world collecting art and that is how the gallery came about.”
Art and location
Her work at Glynn Vivian involved international programmes such as a 2008 show called Displaced, which featured 15 Colombian artists.
“All the international shows felt like they were issues and ideas that would engage with a particular location or our collection,” MacKinnon says.
“I’m interested in how you think about curating in different contexts. At Chapter it was very much more curating to an audience of artists, curators and academics whereas the audience at Glynn Vivian was much broader. And then working at the Venice Biennale, the context is an international art audience, and Artes Mundi is different again.”
Artes Mundi is the UK’s biggest arts prize, with £40,000 going to the winner. As an international competition it attracted more than 800 entries from 70 countries, with nine artists shortlisted for this year’s prize, three more than in 2012.
The prize has the loose theme of being for artists who engage with ideas of humanity, social reality and the lived experience. What this means in practice is that many produce work that is socially engaged and political.
“One of things that makes Artes Mundi distinctive is that we don’t shy away from work that is really, really challenging,” MacKinnon says. “We respect artist’s right to have a space where they can speak about things that are difficult to think about in any other discipline. I think that is important.”
This year’s shortlist includes Renata Lucas, Carlos Bunga and Theaster Gates, whose work tackles people’s experiences of urban life.
Sanja Ivekovic, Omer Fast and Renzo Martens also look at the lives of individuals, but more specifically related to media manipulation. And Sharon Lockhart is among those who collaborate with individuals and communities to show the lives of underrepresented and unseen groups.
The fifth Artes Mundi prize was won by Teresa Margolles, who focuses on the widespread violence and murder related to drug-related crime in northern Mexico.
MacKinnon is aware that Artes Mundi artists often tackle difficult subjects but she says she always tries to think about how audiences might react to contemporary art.
“Of course contemporary art can be challenging, but it does not seem to make any sense to alienate an audience,” she says. “When I was at Chapter I remember showing the work of Orlan, the French artist who has had cosmetic surgery. It was a very shocking work, and I would never have shown that at Glynn Vivian.
“You would have been doing it just to shock and actually the work is really meaningful. You would not have been doing the artist or the audience any good, as there would not have been a conversation there.”
Enhancing education
MacKinnon says it is important that audiences connect with international art and one of the ways this can be done is by commissioning artists to work with local communities and to engage with local stories.
“Because I come from a film world and have studied cinema I’m always surprised why contemporary art is so difficult for some people when they will go to the cinema and happily sit and watch a film.
"I think sometimes it’s the building, it’s the grandeur, it’s the status of high art and low culture and those kinds of debates. But by involving artists in the local culture we can hopefully bridge some of those gaps.”
The work of this year’s shortlisted Artes Mundi artists will be shown in the grandeur of the National Museum of Art for 17 weeks from 25 October with the winner announced on 22 January. But one of MacKinnon’s aims is to expand the exhibition to other venues.
“National Museum Cardiff is still our core partner, but we will also be working with other major arts organisations, Chapter and Ffotogallery, and we are looking for other sites in the city as well,” MacKinnon says.
“We have nine artists this time, not six, and we are really looking to develop Artes Mundi as a series of international solo exhibitions across the city.”
MacKinnon also wants to expand the learning element of Artes Mundi and make it more active in the periods when the exhibition is not on, in much the same way that international art events such as the Liverpool Biennial have been doing recently.
“We will continue our important work with schools when the exhibition is on, but will also expand our work all year round with local communities. We’d like to bring artists in to work with communities and bridge the gap between art and education.”
MacKinnon is also hoping the prize can play more of a role in supporting the arts in Wales. She hopes to build on the success of artists such as Bedwyr Williams and Sean Edwards who are internationally known but choose to live and work in Wales.
“There are loads of really good artists here, and there are opportunities for them but I think it is very difficult because we don’t really have a commercial infrastructure, unlike London, Glasgow or Dublin,” MacKinnon says.
“That is very difficult, so artists struggle. They get support from public arts institutions and bodies but where is that long-term support for them in terms of their career?”
Partnerships
One of things MacKinnon would like to do is develop a community of international artists, curators, selectors and judges that work on Artes Mundi that the organisation can turn to for help, support and advice all the time, rather than just when the prize is on display in Cardiff.
As a venue-less organisation, Artes Mundi already has strong relationships with a range of organisations throughout Wales and beyond.
“It is about developing more partnership working, more collaboration and more long-term relationships with everyone we work with,” MacKinnon says, who feels this is important in difficult financial times.
Artes Mundi also has a strong set of relationships that it has developed through its fundraising. It gets some support from the Arts Council of Wales, Cardiff City Council and a range of other funders.
“We bring in money from all kinds of sources, some international, corporate, which is great because I think it’s really good for the prize and for Wales, but it’s tough,” MacKinnon says.
Moving forward, MacKinnon hopes to deepen the relationship Artes Mundi has with its partners, funders and supporters to ensure that the prize and exhibition continue to flourish. She seems someone who is naturally collaborative and enjoys this way of working.
“I think it is a nice time to join the organisation as we have got a very established art prize and all our partners work really well and are really supportive but if we can get more out of that, it would be exciting,” she says.
“I like to think of an arts organisation as a family and a community with extended communities and families. If we can create an international community and family that can benefit this culture as well as the artists that would be really important.”
This year’s Museums Association annual conference and exhibition takes place in Cardiff on 9-10 October. It is being held in the Wales Millennium Centre.
Karen MacKinnon at a glance
Karen MacKinnon is the first Welsh director of the Artes Mundi international visual arts prize and exhibition. She joined the organisation in July 2013.
She has worked as an international curator based in Wales for the past 16 years and has had roles at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea and the Chapter arts centre in Cardiff.
She also curated a 2005 exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which included the work of Peter Finnemore, Laura Ford and Paul Granjon and a residency by Bedwyr Williams.
MacKinnon was a judge for the 2012 BBC programme The Exhibitionists, which gave people with no art experience the opportunity to curate an exhibition at National Museum Cardiff.
She was born in Swansea and has an MA in visual arts and feminism.
Artes Mundi at a glance
Artes Mundi was created in 2002 to support contemporary visual artists from around the world whose work engages with people’s lives. The organisation’s biennial exhibition and prize takes place in Cardiff and the winner receives £40,000, making it the UK’s largest art prize.
This year’s nine-strong shortlist was chosen from 800 nominations by Artes Mundi director Karen MacKinnon and two selectors: Adam Budak, an independent curator based in Washington, DC, and Sabine Schaschi, the curator of Museum Haus Konstructiv in Zurich.
The nine shortlisted artists for this year’s prize are: Carlos Bunga (Portugal), Karen Mirza and Brad Butler (UK), Omer Fast (Israel), Theaster Gates (US), Sanja Ivekovic (Croatia), Ragnar Kjartansson (Iceland), Sharon Lockhart (US), Renata Lucas (Brazil) and Renzo Martens (the Netherlands).
The winner of the fifth Artes Mundi prize in 2012 was Teresa Margolles, an artist who focuses on the widespread violence and murder related to drug-related crime in northern Mexico.
Artes Mundi is supported by a range of funders, including the Arts Council of Wales, Cardiff City Council, the Colwinston Charitable Trust, the Myristica Trust and the Waterloo Foundation.
