Kirsten Cooke’s research manipulates art historical models by activating the mediatory space between artist and curator; constructing innovative exhibition architectures and fictional-critical texts. She experiments with different forms of staging and situates curating, as a primary and visible practice within the construction of exhibitions.

Cooke produces fictional-critical writing alongside her exhibition practice that performs and repositions the interaction between text and artworks. She treats art writing as a creative practice and situates texts produced through her curatorial practice as artworks that circulate within and beyond the exhibition environment.

Cooke has co-authored three independent curatorial research projects:

-          Material Conjectures

-          KollActiv

-          House of Hysteria

Each project treats practice as research and research as practice; deploying the exhibition as laboratory to render the curator’s strategies tangible. Through this process the projects horizontalize Cooke’s position within the exhibition environment and construct dynamic audience encounters with artworks.

Cooke’s research interrogates the claims made for images from Immanuel Kant to Speculative Realism and the influence these theories have had on the curatorial treatment of artworks. In response to these established strategies, Cooke’s practice performs the curatorial by visualising the mediation between artist, curator and audience within the exhibition environment.

Cooke was awarded a Doctorate from the University of Reading for her practice based PhD entitled, ‘Art Ontology Value: staging the ontology of art within systems of value’ by the examiners Prof. John Russell (University of Reading) and Donna Lynas (curator of Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge) in 2016. Her thesis was a historical and contemporary study of the theoretical and philosophical claims made for images and the effects these have had on curatorial and collective art practice. During her PhD, Cooke constructed exhibition architectures that housed complex group shows; decentring authorship and decolonising the exhibition environment.