Bea Taylor Searle

Bea Taylor Searle grew up in Rome and now lives in Camden, and while she loved art at school it was the experience of seeing Camille Herot’s Grosse Fatigue at the 2013 Venice Biennale that sparked her desire to pursue a career in this field. Searle is ‘most drawn to art that offers a different perspective to status quo thinking and develops a sense of community’, and is particularly excited by computational arts, especially ‘how they can give us agency in our developing relationship with technology’. Among the artists who inspire Searle through their ‘critical ways of thinking about new digital technologies’ are Alida Sun, Ahnjili Zhuparris and Lex Fefegha.

Although she studied Fine Art, Searle discovered upon completing her degree that she much preferred ‘finding ways to spotlight talented peers’ to showcasing her own work, which is what led her down the path of curating. As a curator she specialises in programming creative computing events and exhibitions and enjoys getting to collaborate with, and learn from, talented people through this.

‘In many ways the Southbank Centre has become a place of exploration for me – a space to build new friendships and discover artforms outside of my box’

Among Searle’s curatorial highlights to date are her work co-founding the project Lock-Up Visual Arts and the festival Peckham Digital. The former, a garage gallery on a Bethnal Green council estate, Searle cites as ‘laying the foundation for [her] ongoing commitment to socially-engaged, accessible programming’, whilst the latter continued this passion for ‘accessibility, skill-sharing, and demystifying digital art’, with a programme that prioritised open-source and accessible tools.

For Searle, who has ‘been applying for curatorial jobs for the past couple of years and never quite made the cut’, Southbank Centre Presents offers a real opportunity to develop her career ‘and feel that [her] curatorial skills are valued’. She is looking forward ‘to developing my practice and gaining a clearer sense of the types of events I want to curate in the future’ whilst building friendships and collaborations with her fellow curators and taking advantage of ‘the opportunity to explore new ideas in a context that encourages experimentation and dialogue’.