Jennifer Thatcher

Jennifer Thatcher is a curator and writer on contemporary art. Formerly managing editor of Contemporary magazine, she is also on the staff of the weekly internet newsletter Kultureflash, and is Director of Talks at the ICA.

In 'Video London' her curatorial strategy was to promote the broad and exciting range of British talent in video art, with particular emphasis on younger and emerging artists.  Whilst for a group exhibition at White Box gallery, New York., Thatcher selected and showed 13 MFA students from Goldsmiths College, London.  She curated the exhibition collaboratively with the artist and wrote an essay for the brochure. Thatcher's aim was to disprove the prejudice that British artists were still stuck in the Young British Artist movement of the 1990s with the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. The exhibition had three openings: a performance night; a cross-Chelsea gallery open night; and a VIP night at which Thatcher gave a talk to a group of leading critics and collectors.

Thatcher's writing has looked at the work of multi-media artist Doug Fishbone and Alasdair Hopwood's project 'with' (withyou.co.uk), analysing these works in relation to growing discomfort at New Labour's attempt to coerce artists into providing therapeutic value for viewers, and commercial value for the British economy. Thatcher identified the artists' use of satire and puerile humour to undermine the brand-conscious, status-hungry British contemporary art scene. Fishbone and Hopwood, Thatcher concluded, are at the forefront of a much-needed drive to protect artistic – and more general – freedom of expression.