Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship

Black Waters: Inference to The Veil
Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship
14th March – 25th April 2026
Reid Gallery

Black Waters: Inference to The Veil marks the culmination of the inaugural Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship at The Glasgow School of Art 2025 and features works from Jerwood Collection and Glasgow School of Art Archives & Collections. The first recipient of the Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship at The Glasgow School of Art is ‘Black Waters’, a collaborative, curatorial research project led by Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo Charlery.   

Inference to The Veil announces Black Waters’ debut exhibition. Drawing on Black feminist methodologies and Black scholarship, the exhibition convenes archival and collection works with invited independent artists in a shared curatorial field. This gesture situates Glasgow-based practices within a broader UK and African diasporic constellation. 

The exhibition seeks to frame selected works from Jerwood Collection and GSA Archives & Collections into view with Black spatial practices, citational performance and material thinking. Works from both collections are shown alongside invited artists based in Glasgow and London. Jerwood Collection works feature Barbara Walker, Lubaina Himid CBE, RA, Michael Armitage and Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA, with GSA Archive & Collections works featuring Kialy Tihngang, Emmanuel Addo-Osafo, Hock Aun Teh and Anna Tewungwa. Black Waters have also invited Glasgow-based artists Grace Browne, Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie, Camara Taylor and Adebusola Ramsay, alongside London-based artist Rebecca Bellantoni, to present work in the exhibition. 

The exhibition stages Glasgow as the centre from which to perceive the scale and afterlives of the global colonial project, and the precise, opaque, continuously emergent ways Black life subsists and composes. The exhibition has been developed, particularly in relation to questions of perspective, visual authority, and the historical and contemporary processes through which Black life is obscured. These concerns directly informed the exhibition title, ‘Inference to The Veil’, which reflects the project’s focus on abstraction, opacity, and concealment as both tools of oppressive social design and as counter-strategies for resistance and refusal. For Black curatorial practice, inference becomes a means of recollection and assemblage; studying alongside fragments, distortions and omissions as a methodology for pronouncing Black life and testimony. 

This exhibition and Curatorial Fellowship are supported by Jerwood Foundation with loans from Jerwood Collection. The Jerwood Curatorial Fellowship seeks to foster diverse voices by offering emerging curators in Scotland their first supported exhibition in an institutional setting. The Fellowship offers a period of research and access to Jerwood Collection and a production budget to develop and stage a public exhibition with an event at The Reid Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art. 

About Black Waters
Black Waters is a collaborative, curatorial research incubator and invocation of assembly, and the ensemble of material, led by Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo / Zoë Charlery. This project explores the capacious fields of Black Geography, Black Geology, Meta-Physics, Hauntology and Phenomenology through the a(live) study and practice of Black Performance. Black Waters’ work has been supported by David Dale Gallery’s Studio Residency in 2023, and the upcoming exhibition, ‘aweys gaun’, as part of Glasgow International 2026. 

About Jerwood Foundation
Established in 1977 for John Jerwood MC (1918-1991) by Alan Grieve CBE (1928-2025), Jerwood Foundation is a UK charity committed to supporting excellence and emerging talent in the arts in the UK. Alan Grieve served as Chairman for over 30 years and was appointed Chairman Emeritus in 2023, when Rupert Tyler was appointed Chairman. The organisation is led by Lara Wardle, Executive Director and Trustee and to date Jerwood Foundation has committed over £113 million to support the arts in the UK. 

Jerwood Foundation owns the Jerwood Collection of modern and contemporary art, and an important part of Jerwood’s philanthropic mission is delivered by the Collection through its loaning programme and promotion of a broader understanding, interpretation and enjoyment of art. Also included in the Jerwood group of organisations is Jerwood Space, which was Jerwood’s first major capital project when established by Jerwood Foundation in Southwark in 1998. Jerwood Space is a dedicated rehearsal space providing theatre, musical theatre, opera and dance companies with an outstanding environment within which to create their work.
www.jerwood.org

About GSA Archives and Collections
The Archives and Collections at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) illustrate the history of the institution and the development of its teaching practices since it was established in 1845. As one of the oldest art and design institutions in the UK, GSA holds a museum collection of over 5,000 items, including furniture, works on paper, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, and metalwork, alongside a small amount of born-digital material. Many items were originally acquired as teaching tools, while others have been, and continue to be, collected as examples of work by staff and students. 
www.gsaarchives.net

Image: Inference to The Veil, image courtesy of Black Waters (Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo Charlery), 2026