Rachel Lois Clapham

I am a curator and writer with a specialism in live art and performance. I have worked across exhibitions and gallery education in contemporary live and participatory art projects, most recently curating Nahnou-Together Now an exhibition of socially engaged art at Tate Britain.

I am Co-Director – with Mary - of Open Dialogues, working to develop the practice of critical writing on Live Art and performance. I am particularly interested in performance as a moment of cultural production in relation to the act of ‘being critical’, specifically, how these two events or acts might fundamentally affect each other to produce a different body of knowledge: performance as criticism, and vice versa.

Some recent Open Dialogues projects include Performance Saga and Critical Communities. Projects I have been involved with of late are the exhibition Without You It’s Nothing at Deptford X and Free Press in Bristol. I have also just starting a serialized writing project or ‘column’ for Dance Theatre Journal entitled ‘Inside Performance’ that takes a personal look at the practice of writing on Live Art and performance.

I have recently moved from London to Bradford, West Yorkshire, so have been mixing writing about Yorkshire based visual art and performance with the wearing of hiking boots, rambling on the moors and eating cake in tea houses.


Rachel Lois Clapham rachellois@opendialogues.com

For a selection of my recent publications see the Open Dialogues website

For writing and news about critical writing and performance, as well as details about Open Dialogues projects, see the Open Dialogues blog