curation

Joseph Morgan Schofield is a curator and creative producer based in London and working on local, national and international projects. Their specialisms are in contemporary performance and embodied practice (performance art, Live Art, contemporary dance), artist development and public programming. Operating across institutional contexts and independent artist-led initiatives, Joseph works to curate, faciliate and support spaces which foreground complexity, sensitivity, risk and attunement.

Since 2024 Joseph has worked at Tate Modern & Tate Britain as Curator (Public Programmes). Their first programmes, reflecting on the cultural politics of the 1980s will take place in Spring 2025. Prior to their work at Tate, Joseph has programmed contemporary dance, performance art, Live Art and embodied practices at The Place (2022-24) and managed artist development programmes at the Live Art Development Agency (2018-22). Significant presentations at The Place included works by VestAndPage and Gareth Chambers/Popperface (2023); BRABA Platforma, Lorraine Dambermont, SERAFINE1369 and Junk Ensemble (2024).

Future Ritual

Joseph’s research interests into belief, mystery, land and death are most clearly expressed through Future Ritual, a long term curatorial, research and organising practice initiated in 2017. Early iterations of Future Ritual intentionally shifted shape, emerging as a touring platform, festival, season and intensive workshop, borrowing and activating contexts including the ICA (London), Arnolfini and SPACE Studios.

Formalised in 2023 as a community interest company, Future Ritual continues to hold Joseph’s curatorial and artistic research alongside artist development and participatory projects and important collaborative relationships, such as those with Anne Bean, Emilyn Claid, Marilyn Arsem, Martin O’Brien and VestAndPage. Significant projects have included ‘In Search of the Miraculous’, a weekend of artistic pilgrimage and spiritual seeking convened with Anne Bean for Norfolk and Norwich Festival(2023), and ‘An Eternity of Nothingness’, a year-long research and creation process exploring immortality with Martin O’Brien at the Whitechapel Gallery (2023).


Helena Goldwater, Future Ritual: CEREMONY [I], 2024. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

An emergent strand of Future Ritual’s practice explores the intersections of art-ritual practices and health and wellbeing. This has been piloted first through ‘The Last Breath Society’, a series of workshops for queer people dealing with grief and bereavement. 

Future Ritual's current project ‘CEREMONY’ explores how artmaking can function as a modality of ceremony amdist the fragmentation of contemporary life, including as a mode of gathering for those alienated by and excluded from normative structures and belief systems. Beginning on the midsummer weekend of 2024, the programme will unfold across the following 12 months in London and during Venice International Performance Art Week.

Marilyn Arsem, Voices, Future Ritual: CEREMONY [I], 2024. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.

Previous Future Ritual curatorial programmes have featured Marilyn Arsem, Devika Bilimoria, Helena Goldwater and Sandra Johnston (2024); Martin O’Brien and Anne Bean (2023); Soojin Chang, Rubiane Maia, and Benjamin Sebastian (2022), VestAndPage (2021); Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Leman Daricioglu, Augusto Cascales, Radage & Hardaker, Sandra Stanionyte, Kelvin Atmadibrata, and Charlie Ashwell (2019).

writing & teaching

Joseph’s writings on queerness, worldmaking, performance art and ritual have been published by Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff), Undercurrent (New York City), Venice International Performance Art Week (Venice) and ]performance s p a c e[ (London). They have guest-lectured at a number of Universities including ArtEZ University of the Arts (Arnhem, NL), Rose Bruford College (London, UK) and Sheffield Hallam University (Sheffield, UK).

‘These works are relics of the future. Something strange has happened and I am no longer sure what tense we are in’

Accompanying text for Leo Robinson: The Infinity Card, Chapter Arts Centre, 2023

Anne Bean and Ansuman Biswas, DISCHARGE, 2024. Photo by Manuel Vason.

collaboration & artist-initiated projects

Joseph’s practice has been charged and shaped by their participation in artist-led initatives, collaborative projects and temporary autonomous spaces and communities. They are a frequent collaborator of the Venice International Performance Art Week and the affiliated Anam Cara Collective.

In partnership with Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph co-founded VSSL studio in 2020. VSSL is a container for contemporary, queer, interdisciplinary artistic practice(s) and communities. VSSL was activated with ‘GATHERING IN A TIME OF PLAGUE’, a public programme responding to the needs of time-based art and artists during the pandemic.

They were formerly an associate artist and later co-director of ]performance s p a c e[ (2019-22), an independent artist-led entity which remains the only performance art specific curatorial platform in the UK. Joseph previously co-curated and co-produced MOVE CLOSE, a club night at the intersection of electronic music, dramaturgy, choreography and performance art (2018-19).

Jasper Llewellyn, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by zack mennell.

Kimvi, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by zack mennell.