Speaker Biographies

Emma Baker, Deputy Director, Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s Emma Baker joined Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department in 2011 as a researcher and writer; she was appointed Head of Research in 2014 and Deputy Director in 2015. As a specialist working on evening sales, Emma manages a team of cataloguers and takes responsibility for the catalogue’s editorial and visual content whilst also overseeing the hang of evening sale exhibitions. Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Emma worked in the Curatorial Department at Tate Britain and for the Fleming Collection in Mayfair. She graduated with an MA in Art History (Distinction) from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2010.

Andrew Bick, Artist Andrew Bick is an artist and curator who through both art and exhibition making is exploring the complex and ambivalent nature of our relationship to Modernism. His practice and curatorial work reconfigures principles of concrete art in relation to the social impact and sustainability of contemporary art practice. He is represented in significant public and private collections worldwide, notably Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, The British Museum, Yale Center for British Art, GoMA, Glasgow, Goldman Sachs, Roche Art Collection, UBS, Stalke Collection, Denmark and Pizzuti Collection, USA. He supervises PhDs at Kingston University and University of Gloucestershire and at the latter is Reader in Fine Art. He is currently working on a solo exhibition for Hales Gallery for January-March 2018 and a monograph with Hatje Canz/Museum Haus Konstruktiv, to be launched in Zurich in April 2019. In 2018 Bick made a solo exhibition at Galerie von Bartha, Basel and has just completed a major public commission at the entrance to Princes Arcade, Piccadilly, London titled For Marlow Moss and commissioned by Modus Operandi with Rolfe-Judd Architects for The Crown Estate. In 2017 he held a solo exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, and co- curated with Jonathan Parsons and Katie Pratt The Order of Things, at The Wilson (Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum). His work was included in Painting Black, RAUMSCHROTH, Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany (2017) & NOW-ISM: Abstraction Today at the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio (2016). In 2014 he co-curated Conversations with Marlow Moss, for &Model Gallery, Leeds, in association with the Marlow Moss exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery. Other major public space exhibitions include Slow Magic at Bluecoat, Liverpool in 2009. Since 2008 he has been developing projects based on research in to British Construction and Systems Art from the 1950’s to 1970’s initiated as a result of a Henry Moore Institute Fellowship in 2007/08. Bick presented a paper for the TATE Modern conference Abstract Connections [March 2010], titled Construction and its Shadow, Double agents and split identities in the world of Abstraction, focusing in particular on the work of Anthony Hill and his Dadaist alter-ego Achill Redo. He has given further papers for seminars at TATE, Leeds Art Gallery and Henry Moore Institute and public gallery talks on artists such as Raoul de Keyser [Whitechapel], Kenneth and Mary Martin, Laura Owens [Camden Arts Centre], Robert Mangold [Parasol Unit] and Norman Dilworth [Huddersfield Art Gallery]. Bick is represented by Hales Gallery, London and Galerie von Bartha, Basel and he has written for Art Monthly, Art and Christianity Enquiry, The Brooklyn Rail, Kultureflash and Abstract Critical. He is currently Chair of the board of Tannery Arts London and on the advisory board of Drawing Room, London.

Josephine Breese, Consultant Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art Josephine Breese was co-director of Breese Little, a commercial gallery in London, between 2009 and 2017. She teaches and lectures in contemporary art, art history and the art market. She co-founded Art & Culture, a non-profit educational organisation that offered a biannual art criticism prize and free lecture programme at LSE and The Courtauld Institute for five years. She has written for publications including Art Monthly, Art Review Asia, Art Asia Pacific and The White Review. Josephine holds an MA from the Courtauld Insitute and a BA from Cambridge University.

Emma Cousin, Artist and Curator Emma Cousin trained as a painter at The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University, before moving to London in 2008. She maintains a vibrant painting practice, recently winning the Marmite Painting Prize and exhibiting numerous times in London and internationally.

After running a commercial gallery in Pimlico, Emma freelanced as an art event organiser, researcher and curator, working with art institutions and museums, schools, commercial galleries, small artist led projects and private collections. Working at Robin Katz Gallery since 2011, Emma honed an interest in curation where she conceived one of their most successful shows, ‘The British Line’ charting British history through Modern British drawing.

Emma has been commissioned by Hanmi Gallery, The Barbican Arts Trust and Arthouse1 Gallery to work with their alternative spaces and in 2015, left Robin Katz to set up her own space. Bread&Jam began as a series of experimental and artist led exhibitions based in a three-storey property in SE London. In resistance to space limitations and playful opportunities for mid-career artists, she set up a residency environment where new works could be tested, realised and exhibited to the public, without the constraints of a commercial gallery and outside of this conventional setting. Working with over five hundred different artists over the past three years, Bread&Jam has become a platform where the public can interact directly with art in pieces commissioned for and developed in alternative spaces.

Focused on developing interdisciplinary collaboration, Emma now works with writers, critics, educators, philosophers, poets, chefs, bakers and a wonderful range of artists to remain curious and challenged in reflecting and questioning the world in which we live.

Gareth Fletcher, Lecturer, Art Business, Sotheby’s Institute of Art-London Gareth Fletcher is a lecturer in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He is Co-Unit Leader of the Art Business, Foundations and Placement semester course; Leader of the Art Crime summer study course; and Co-Leader of the Art and Its Markets summer study course. He also lectures on Strategy and Risk Management as part of the Business Management in the Art World programme; Strategic Planning as part of the Business Management of an Art Gallery programme; and the Contemporary Art Market as part of the Contemporary Art in London Today programme. He has received a TECHNE AHRC scholarship to pursue his PhD examining the semiotics of provenance as institutional construct in the establishment of cultural and economic value in the market for Near Eastern antiquities.

Lauren Keeley, Artist Lauren Keeley was born in Milton Keynes and lives and works in London. She is represented by the Frutta Gallery in Rome. Her solo exhibitions include Parkrun at Liste Art Fair, Basel (2017); In A Year, Frutta, Rome (2015); and Window, Supplement, London (2015). Her group exhibitions include Oritca Shop, Frutta, Rome (2018); Ideal Science: A Risographic Survey, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall (2017); HO HO HO, Frutta, Rome (2017); Canard au Sans, Sans Titre, Paris (2017); 31 Women, Breese Little, London (2017); Parallax Scrolling, Breese Little, London (2017); Maybe your lens is scratched, Slate Projects, London (2016); Exercises in Style, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest; GRANPALAZZO, Rome (2016); What’s Up, Soho Revue, London (2016); Imagine, Brand New Gallery, Milan (2016);Testing Tropes, Kestle Barton, Cornwall (2015); Strepitus, Crepitus, Fragor, Penwith Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall (2015); and Sunday Art Fair, London (2014). Lauren holds an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London (2014) where she was awarded the Barto dos Santos Memorial Prize and a BA from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (2010). She will show some of her recent works at Frieze London in October, 2018.

Ed Leeson, Consultant Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art Ed Leeson is a London-based lecturer specialising in Modern and Contemporary Art. He is a staff lecturer for Tate and a guest lecturer on a number of courses at Sotheby's Institute of Art. He is also a guest lecturer for a number of American universities, including Pepperdine (California), Syracuse (New York), Lewis & Clark (Portland), James Madison (Virginia) and Wake Forest (North Carolina). He is an independent curator, and has organised a number of exhibitions for The Residence Gallery, London and Public Exhibitions, London.

Anna Moszynska, Consultant Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art Anna Moszynska pioneered the study of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute of Art during the late Eighties, and oversaw the development of the MA in Contemporary Art. In addition to writing a number of books, she has contributed to various journals, including Tate, Apollo, Arts Review, TLS, and Art Monthly, as well as writing for and lecturing at numerous international institutions. Her research interests include the development of recent British, European, American, and Middle Eastern practice, and the problematic issue of medium specificity. In 2010, she curated an exhibition of Antony Gormley's drawings and sculpture for the reopening of MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Rome. Anna is an art critic for BBC Radio 3 and a member of the International Art Critics Association.

Dr Yasmin Railton, Consultant Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art Dr Yasmin Railton is an international curator and art historian specialising in Contemporary Art and the art market. She has over ten years' experience working in blue chip Post-War and Contemporary galleries and auction houses as a Research Specialist. She has been both resident faculty at and a consultant for Sotheby’s Institute of Art since 2013 and lectures extensively to both academic and international collector groups. Bridging art business, history of art, and conservation, her interdisciplinary research focuses on the value of contemporary art within the art market and public museums. She holds a BA in Art History, MA in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, and a PhD in Contemporary Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Frank Wasser, Consultant Lecturer, Sotheby’s Institute of Art Frank Wasser is an artist and art historian from Dublin, Ireland, now based in London. He studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, graduating with an MFA in 2012. He has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally and has been an invited guest speaker at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Design Museum, The National College of Art and Design in Ireland, Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair, University of Reading and Sotheby’s of Art. His current research and practice takes the form of an ongoing analysis of the legacies of Modernism in contemporary art writing and object-making.

Frank’s recent and upcoming exhibitions, performances and projects include: Letters of Last Resort, curated by Pádraic E Moore and featuring Frank Wasser, Jenny Holzer, Liam Gillick, Simon Bedwell, Linder Sterling, OJAI. Brussels (July, 2018); Survey, a group show of young emerging artists at Jerwood Visual Arts, London (October, 2018); Sad Mirror, a two person show with Joseph Noonan-Galley, xero, kline and coma, London (October, 2018); Radical Residency 2, Unit 1 Gallery, London (October, 2018); Tendencies in Contemporary Art: A History of Fabricated History for the European Cultural Academy, Venice (2017); Question Centre and A-Z at RCA Riverlight curated by Maria C.M.P de Pontes, London (2017); Residency and performance at Villa Empain, Brussels, selected by Asad Raza (2017); On Curating Histories, curated by Kate Strain, Dublin (2015). Frank's first book entitled ZERO HOUR FRAGMENTS will be published by MA BIBLIOTHEQUE in December, 2018.

Dr Gilda Williams, MFA Curating, Goldsmiths College, University of London Dr Gilda Williams is an art critic and teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has guest-lectured at universities including the Royal College of Art, Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Central St Martins. She was a commissioning editor at Phaidon Press, where she commissioned more than fifty books in the Contemporary Artists series. She also conceived and commissioned Phaidon's 'cream' series of 'biennials-in-a book' and edited the ‘Themes and Movements’ series of anthologies. Other publications include Vitamin P on contemporary painting; Vitamin Ph on contemporary photography; the monograph Gordon Matta-Clark; The 20th Century Art Book; and many others.

Dr Williams’ special area of expertise is the Gothic in contemporary art. Her texts on the Gothic are included in The Gothic World (Routledge, 2013) and Gothic (British Film Institute, 2013).

Stephan Wrobel, Collector and Founder and CEO of Diapason Currencies and Commodities Stephan Wrobel is the founder and CEO of Diapason Currencies and Commodities. For almost two decades, he has collected Post-War European Art, including works by Giacometti, Hartung, Buffet, Le Corbusier, Fontana, Sutherland, Morellet and Debre. He has loaned pieces from his collection to world-renowned museums and galleries, collaborated on publications, and enjoyed many opportunities to interview and engage with important artists. Stephan is in regular contact with leading auction houses and dealers around the world. He was featured in the FT Weekend magazine and contributed to the recent biography, Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega Artist (Nick Foulkes, 2016). He is a regular lecturer at the Kedge Business School (Paris, Bordeaux and Marseille), with a particular focus on the international art market.