Rayleen Forester is a Tartanya–Adelaide based, independent arts worker and writer. Rayleen’s curatorial interests focus on cross-cultural engagement and outcomes through experimental curation and programming, performance and writing.In 2010 she was awarded a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi travel grant to undertake sustained curatorial research in Japan where she lived and worked for two and half years. She was awarded the inaugural Curator Mentorship Initiative grant (2012) through NAVA to collaborate with the second largest European Biennale MANIFESTA in Genk, Belgium. She co-curated the long-established Artists’ Week symposium in 2014 with Lars Bang Larsen (DEN) and Richard Grayson (UK) for the Adelaide Festival. She writes for national publications and is a founding member of initiatives FELTspace (SA) and fine print magazine (SA). In 2016 she curated Playground presented at JamFactory (SA) and FX Harsono: Beyond Identity at Nexus Arts for OzAsia Festival. In 2018 she was the inaugural writer in residence at ARTWORKS for Guildhouse and in 2020 she was curator in residence at ACE Open where she co-curated If the future is to be worth anything: 2020 South Australian Artist Survey with Artistic Director, Patrice Sharkey. As part of fine print she has co curated numerous live events for the Art Gallery of South Australia, Next Wave festival (Vic) and ACE Gallery (SA) with numerous national and internationally recognised artists. She is currently participating in the 2022 Venice Biennale Delegates Program with the Australia Council for the Arts.
Rayleen acknowledges the Kaurna people as the traditional owners of the lands upon which she works. Sovereignty was never ceded.
We pay respect to Elders past and present and honour their continual cultural and spiritual connection to what always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
