Kim Gurney

Next Generation Scholar

Dr Kim Gurney’s expertise spans fine art, urban studies, and journalism/ media discourse. She brings an interdisciplinary academic mix to her research projects, as well as a practice-led perspective as a writer and visual artist, favouring arts-based methods and multimodal narrative form. Kim’s research over the past few years has focused upon ‘offspaces’ as sites of counterfactual imagination and modes of instituting otherwise, from the shared working principles of independent art spaces on the continent to the second lives of a film set, from the invisible curatorial labour of back room archive to the unforeseen trajectories of art in public space. In addition to her work at CHR, Kim has for a decade (to 2022) collaborated as a Research Associate with ACC at the interface between contemporary art and urban dynamics.

Red List: Cape Flats Nature Reserve (2018)
Kim Gurney
95 tags, honeycomb panel, patternmakers putty, shellac
127 x 97 x 5cm (framed)
Collection: Corporate (Cape Town)

Kim’s writing is inflected by a former life as a journalist and news editor, and she is widely published in different genres. Recently this range includes books, journals and conferences to an artist book, exhibition production, digital storymaps, a photobook, media articles, and more, as publishing segues into artistic practice. The latter spans studio & exhibitions, curation, and discourse. Her art largely concerns disappearances of different kinds, and makes restorative gestures. Kim also runs ad hoc a nomadic platform guerilla gallery (b.2012) that collaborates in unlikely spaces; in 2023, it inhabits The Shed – a tiny space for big ideas.

Links:

• General: www.linktr.ee/kimjg
• Social media: @kim_gurney
• All research outputs: www.kimgurney.com/research
• Platform/Plotform: https://www.africancentreforcities.net/programme/platform/

• Recent key publications

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  • Gurney, K. 2022. Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa (Motto, Berlin & Lausanne). Available:  http://www.mottodistribution.com/shop/panya-routes-kim-gurney-motto-books-9782940672394.html
  • Gurney, K. Spring 2023. ‘Breathing Room: Working Principles of Independent Art Spaces in African Cities’. African Arts, Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 26-41, https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00696
  • Gurney, K. N. Muyanga & E. Pieterse. 31 October 2022. ‘The Creative Politics of Legibility.’ Public Culture, Part III Speculations, Vol. 34 (3), pp. 515-535, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-9937410
  • Gurney, K. 2021. ‘The mogul, his meerkat and the meerkat’s second life’. E-flux Architecture, ‘Workplace’ – A collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Canadian Center for Architecture. Editors: Nick Axel, Albert Ferré, Nikolaus Hirsch and Megan Marin. Available: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/workplace/430308/the-mogul-his-meerkat-and-the-meerkat-s-second-life/
  • Gurney, K. 2020. ‘Offscreen: Making it and faking it’. Writingplace – Reading(s) and Writing(s): Unfolding Processes of Transversal Writing, Vol. 3, pp.110-130. Available: https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/writingplace/article/view/4354
  • Gurney, K. 2020. ‘Green Screen’. A digital storymap. Centre for Humanities Research. Available: www.tinyurl.com/s6cvjak
  • Gurney, K. July 2018. ‘Zombie monument: Public art and performing the present’. Cities, Special issue – Urban Geography of the Arts. Guinard, P. & Molina, G. (Eds). Vol. 7, pp. 33-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.11.002 
  • Gurney, K. 2017. August House is Dead, Long Live August House! The Story of a Johannesburg Atelier. Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books. Available: https://fourthwallbooks.com/product/august-house-dead-long-live-august-house-story-johannesburg-atelier/

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