Curatorial Mentorships

Indonesian Artist Lala Nurlala × British Curator Matt Burrows

What happened during the collaboration?

British curator Matt Burrows was paired with Indonesian artist Lala Nurlala. Central to Lala’s art practice is the cartoon character Dr. Zone – a character she uses to explore social issues, autism and postcolonialism. Over seven Zoom mentorship sessions, Lala and Matt met and discussed the process of selecting artists for a project and forming a theme of ideas. Expanding the scope of professional development for the mentorship, they developed a multimedia project around the ideas of pop culture and subversion, while also learning about curatorial texts. The outcome is Lala’s curated project FANDOMINIUM presenting a diverse group of international artists that explore fandom and pop culture through the lens of fan-art, appropriation, subversion, and cross-cultural exchange. Artists Lala selected for FANDOMINIUM include Larry Achiampong, David Blandy, Project Onward artist Jackie Cousins, and Karim Saad. As part of her curatorial process, Lala also recorded interviews with the exhibiting artists, asking these three questions: What cultures influenced your work? How did popular culture affect you growing up? What’s your favourite piece of pop culture? Be it a TV show, comic, or music.

Biographies

“I’m LALA NURLALA, who doesn’t know where to come, or where to go. I have lived in the United States and Indonesia, but I don’t truly belong to any of them. Because there’s no culture I can completely identify with, I just watch them as an outside observer. I mainly observe pop culture and Indonesian traditional culture, though I can delve into other cultures as well. One thing I can attach to is a character from Milo Murphy’s Law named Dr. Zone.” –

Lala Nurlala

MATT BURROWS is the Curator and Gallery Manager at Exeter Phoenix, a multi-artform contemporary arts venue in Devon, UK that specialises in working with emerging and midcareer artists. He has previously held project management roles at Spacex, Exeter and Victoria Miro Gallery, London, as well as working on a variety of freelance consultancy projects, mentoring and lecturing roles.

Naoki Urasawa Text Balloon 2022

Digital illustration

Courtesy the artist