Rate My Professor Kim Donaldson

Associate Professor Kim Donaldson is a visual artist, writer, and curator at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, where she holds the position of Research Convenor for PhD programs and Associate Professor in Art. She earned her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2016, with a thesis titled Technotopiary: another formation of the curatorial, which drew upon her experience founding and directing Techno Park Studios in Melbourne's western suburbs from 2009 to 2015. This initiative extended into Technopia Tours, facilitating international projects. Her artistic practice incorporates drawing, painting, video, installation, performance, and curatorial work. Active since 1983, she was one of the inaugural studio artists at 200 Gertrude Street, participating in the Gertrude Street Spaces Artist Collective and Studios until 1987. Her career at VCA includes prior roles as Lecturer in the Painting Program and Senior Lecturer, highlighting her progression in artistic education and practice-led research.

Donaldson's research focuses on concepts such as the artist as curator, spatial and experiential dimensions of exhibitions and events, and embodied new materialist art practices. In 2022, she co-established Cūrā8 with Dr. Sean Lowry to curate exhibitions, texts, artworks, performances, and events at project8 gallery through 2025, supported by a Collaborative Research Agreement with the University of Melbourne. This work emphasizes dynamic relationships between artists, curators, and theorists, promoting aesthetic languages, material innovation, and experiential knowledge. A significant ongoing collaboration is the Feminist Colour-IN project, begun in 2016 with Dr. Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, featuring performative events centered on feminist activism through colouring and drawing, presented in Warsaw, Byron Bay, Jyväskylä (Finland), Rome, and Melbourne. Scholarly contributions include the co-authored article 'Feminist Colour-IN: An Aesthetic Activism of Connection and Collectivity' (2019) and 'Technotopiary: another formation of the curatorial' (2015), alongside conference presentations such as 'Re-Framing Artist as Curator' at AAANZ and works like 'Feminist Colour-IN (Finland edition)', 'Chronomingle', and 'Crepusculum'. Her curatorial and research activities have fostered international partnerships and advanced contemporary art discourse.