Jonathan Kimberley is an Artist and Senior Curator, who lives and works in lutruwita / Tasmania and Kamberri / Canberra.
Over the past 30 years he has developed more than 120 contemporary, atemporal and durational projects across the contienent of Australia, as well as Internationally in the UK, Italy, and Japan. His praxis is guided by apolitical transcultural truth-telling, through collaborative decolonial discussion.
Working closely with First Nations and diverse cultural communities, Kimberley critiques his own (post)Western cultural presumptions about Originary cultural knowledge and connectivity with International Country.
An eighth-generation Australian, whose ancestral origins are in the UK, Central Europe, and Scandinavia, he is a descendant of Edward Kimberley, a First Fleet convict from England, who was transported to Sydney in 1788 and later became a colonial free settler in Tasmania in 1808. As such, for Jonathan, “the decolonisation of my Originary identity is of equal importance to the decolonisation of all my relations and praxes, both internationally and across the continent of Australia.”
Kimberley’s integrated artistic & curatorial praxis is transdisciplinary enabling manifold forms of enquiry and outcome.
His career combines international art practice and curatorial projects; arts organisation management and consulting; major public art and cultural programs; interdisciplinary research; policy development and advocacy; collaborative cultural strategy and innovative critical thinking.
Kimberley was awarded a PhD | Doctor of Philosophy (International Art Practice as Research) Australian National University, Kamberri / Canberra Australia, and developed through Kingston University London School of Art. He also holds an MFA (Research) University of Western Australia; and a BA (Fine Art) RMIT University Melbourne.
