Curator & Editor

Sophia Crilly is Director and Curator of Bureau, Manchester. Bureau works internationally with represented and invited artists at varying career stages to provide a platform and context for dynamic and innovative contemporary visual practice. The gallery premieres and commissions new work, both on and off site, initiates international curatorial, residency and publishing projects, and participates in art fairs.

Crilly has worked as Curator for PureScreen (Artist Film & Video Programme 2004 -10) and was previously Programme Manager at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2002-06) where she worked on key exhibitions such as British Art Show 6; Tom Wood’s Photieman; Parade with Mark Leckey and Film & Video Umbrella; and curated The Medium & Daybreak, Olivia Plender’s first solo exhibition. She has worked freelance for a number of organisations, curating projects across the UK and internationally, including venues in Brazil, Canada, Finland, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the USA.

Since 2009 curated projects at Bureau and other venues include: Trade City, with Olaf Breuning, Chips/Urban Splash, Manchester; Stinkhorn, Jacob Cartwright; Skins, Mit Senoj; The Economy of the Gift, A Foundation, Liverpool; Permanent Vacation, Andy Holden (with Laura Mansfield as part of Interlude programme); Transit, Vinca Petersen; Naturalis, Mit Senoj, Bureau in collaboration with Manchester Art Gallery.

Current and forthcoming exhibitions include: Industry & Idleness, curated for Contemporary Art Society, London; Place Understanding, Evangelia Spiliopoulou’s first solo exhibition; a group exhibition for The Manchester Contemporary art fair; and Seer’s Catalogue, Dave Griffiths solo exhibition at Bureau (Nov 2010).

Crilly is currently undertaking her PhD (Practice as Research) in Curating at the University of Salford, where she also lectures part-time in Critical & Contextual Studies. Her current research focuses on mechanisms of association – archival, editing and sampling impulses in contemporary visual practice, and the relationship of appropriated material to aura, memory, and taste.