Florence Peake: Artist Talk and Q&A with Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt

Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt has been engaging with the internal dynamics of the cultural field for two decades. Having worked as a curator in Europe and the US, she dedicated herself to exploring the politico-economic conditions underwriting artistic practice. Increasingly deploying an investigative approach, Rebecca has scrutinised the devolution of cultural provision from local government to the private sector. As Researcher-in-Residence at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry, she interrogated claims of culture-led regeneration being made in relation to the first incarnation of UK City of Culture.

As Research Associate at Arts for Health, Manchester Metropolitan University, she compiled an international evidence base around the relationship between arts engagement and health, which tentatively demonstrated a positive association between attending arts events and longer lives better lived. Her seven-year study of the cultural policy of the Cuban Revolution has recently been published by PM Press. Rebecca is a founder member of the Centre for Cultural Change, an umbrella organisation that enables critical and creative researchers to explore alternatives to the current socio-cultural malaise.

Florence Peake is a London-based artist and choreographer. With extensive training in dance and a background in painting, her performance practice combines a variety of media—from drawing to sculpture—in relationship to the moving body. Site and audience, live and recorded text, wit and humour are key to her work.

Her interdisciplinary projects, made both independently and collaboratively, have been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally since 1995 in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Prague, Sweden and Latvia. Peake’s work has also been commissioned and shown at prestigious venues such as the National Portrait Gallery (2008), National Review of Live Art (2009), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2012), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2013) and Hayward Gallery (2014).