curatorial — Ricardo Reverón Blanco

Traces of the Non-existent, ebun sodipo

The exhibition weaves together sculpture, collage, and text to explore the experiences, histories, and strategies of resistance of Black trans women across time. At the heart of Traces of the Non-Existent is the figure of Vitoria – a 16th-century Black trans woman who was enslaved and defied European conceptions of gender and the body. Through an assemblage of historical fragments and imagined futures, Sodipo reclaims and reconfigures Black trans narratives, inviting audiences to engage with histories that have been silenced or erased.
Labours of Love, Emily Witham, Alana Lake, BoyBlue, Daira Ronzoni co-curated with Gemma Rolls-Bentley

Curated at Treadgolds, a historic site in Portsmouth that was once the premises of a family-run ironmongery and blacksmith business established in the 19th century, the building will become the backdrop for how one can forge lasting and enduring love in a world that often denies it. At the heart of the exhibition is the idea that love, for many queer individuals, is not simply a natural or effortless emotion, but a powerful act of defiance, perseverance, and self-determination. In a society that often marginalises or seeks to define love within heteronormative frameworks, queer love requires active, ongoing work. From self-love to romantic, platonic, or familial connections, love becomes a radical act of existence and resistance—something we must fight for, nurture, and continuously build.
Embodied Activism, Sivan Rubinstein

Embodied Activism marks a bold new chapter in Sivan Rubinstein’s interdisciplinary practice, bringing her expertise in dance, projection, and installation into the realm of visual arts. This exhibition navigates the profound relationships between bodies, spaces, and urgent global issues, offering a transformative perspective on creation as it emerges from destruction. Through movement, Rubinstein unpacks the complexities of the climate crisis, migration, and womanhood. Her work transforms the gallery into a site of lived experience, where choreography becomes a form of storytelling, and installation an archive of collective memory. The pieces in Embodied Activism challenge us to consider the resilience of the human body as it moves through disruption and adapts to ever-changing environments.
Course Leader

Aspire is a skills-driven professional development course designed for artists, curators, and arts professionals.
Classifications, Jasleen Kaur, Dinu Li, Jamila Prowse, Joshua Raffell

A rocket launches in between the gallery walls, a pheasant’s feather raises itself on top of an assemblage, a dining table is set inviting you to digest a film whilst being transported to a familiar home. This exhibition includes works from four artists – Jasleen Kaur, Dinu Li, Jamila Prowse and Joshua Raffell – working with objects to explore how we impart them with meaning and classify them, and in doing so, become a metaphor for how class functions in our society…
Photo Fringe 2024 - Emerging Curators Programme

I will be managing and mentoring this year’s Emerging Curators cohort for Photo Fringe to support them through its programme.
Sorry I'm Not Sorry, Lauren Joy Kennett

Aspex Portsmouth and Photoworks are pleased to present Lauren Joy Kennett’s (LJK) first solo show and the debut of her newest body of work Sorry I’m Not Sorry. Commissioned as part of the In Focus programme, this new body of work explores the artists’ experience of living with undiagnosed autism.
The Temperament Index, Melanie Jackson

In her installation, the viewer is invited to wander amongst projected animations, cut-out figures and body bits, handmade clay objects, drawings and more. Jackson has rallied together a procession, a carnival of conceptual nomads that jostle and jive, pleasure, fight and take flight across a trans-historical plane of existence, in which we are as much participants as voyeurs.
The Natural, Rural, and Remote, Eva Louisa Jonas at Serchia Gallery

The Natural, Rural & Remote’ is an ongoing body of work that explores the increase of imagery relating to the natural, rural, and remote and the so often romanticised and aestheticised activities that take place there such as walking, retreats, birdwatching, wild swimming, and creative crafts.
Platform 2023

Platform Graduate Award 2023 presents the work of 10 artists launching their artistic careers following graduation. Part of a regional initiative established by CVAN South East (Contemporary Visual Arts Network South East) in 2012, Platform aims to support emerging talent at a key moment of transition. For many new graduates the loss of the support network of Art School can be extremely challenging. In addition to an exhibition opportunity, Platform participants are invited to join an alumni network to connect with peers across the country, accessing professional development, meeting in person and sharing their experiences.
☰pa●○pa☴, Rae-Yen Song

Through sound, drawing, sculpture, costume, moving image and family collaboration, the exhibition focuses on the artist’s father, shining a light on a life that has resisted colonial realities and found an alternative way of being through paths of Eastern spiritualism, science fiction, video gaming, and 1970s psychedelia. ☰pa●○pa☴ reimagines the artist’s father as a new character: a voyager from Song’s multiverse; a shape-shifting figure – part avatar, part deity – inspired by Taoist notions of continuous change.
Group Show, Eileen Cooper, Uduehi Imienwanrin, Alice Hayes, Janet Sainsbury

Group Show paints a picture of who makes our communities. It explores how diverse communities can intersect and coexist, bringing attention to the power of togetherness. Consisting of a wide range of relationships and group dynamics; such as families, friends, allies and partners, the works demonstrate the human need for company.
Home is Not a Place

In this body of work, Johny Pitts documents Black British culture, people, and geographies journeying along the Thames and circumnavigating the British coast.
CAPSID

CAPSID is an Arts Council Collection, large scale multi media installation, by the artist John Walter, opening at Aspex Portsmouth from Friday 13 January to Monday 10 April 2023. CAPSID is the result of a collaboration between Walter and molecular virologist Professor Greg Towers of University College London. The work brings to light the underrepresented debate around viruses such as HIV, uncovering new scientific knowledge about viral capsids and sharing it with the wider public.
The Force of Fantasy

An exhibition at Socially Engaged Art Salon proposing that fantasy is a powerful tool to not only imagine alternative futures but to manifest them by looking beyond convention.
Terms of Engagement, LCC

A practical workshop in which UnderExposed interrogated the role of the curator through collective play, together we unpicked the terms ‘unlearning’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘curation’ through the construction of a wooden framework.
Draft.knot.wake

An accessible open call exhibited on public spaces in 10 countries around the globe.
Communal Rituals

A commission at Brighton Centre for Contemporary Arts about unlearning through collaborative research methods to explore the role of rituals in community formation practices.
UnderExposed x Photo Fringe

A critical enquiry into the effect of collectivity on art practices.
Critical Pulse

Critical Pulse is a commissioned work by the collective UnderExposed. It is the outcome of a six-month project initiated by the Sussex Festival of Ideas and Photoworks.
Photography+ Issue 16

Edited the 16th issue of Photography+ curated around the theme of ‘street’.
LIGHT

Under the guidance of Monica Allende, I produced the exhibition for Peckham 24 (2021) and its catalogue designed by Sarah Boris and published by Mörel.
In the dark, Phoebe Wingrove

In 2021, Phoebe Wingrove was diagnosed with HPV and developed abnormal cells, when she received her results of having CIN 2, she felt the need to make images to make sense of the experience. After some initial research and understanding of this pathology, Wingrove learned that her close friend also went through the same process.