IN CONVERSATION: EMMA FIELDEN AND MELISSA BIANCA AMORE

This conversation took place at 812B George Street, Sydney Australia, on 28 November 2021, for the finissage of The Bells + Andromeda and the Milky Way.

Melissa Bianca Amore is an Italian/Australian curator, art critic and contemporary philosopher based in New York. Her contributions to arts cultural discourse are extensive and are informed by her widely respected and dynamic practice. Amore’s primary area of research is the study of phenomenology and perception in relation to contemporary sculpture and large-scale environments. 

An acclaimed critic and essayist, Amore has written for leading publications and authored museum exhibition catalogues since 2005, including her recent interview on Polish-German installation artist Alicja Kwade for BOMB magazine, New York. Amore has undertaken the roles of Visiting Critic and Thesis Respondent for the MFA Fine Arts Graduate Exhibitions at Parsons School of Design, The New School. She has been a visiting critic at Residency Unlimited, New York; Art Omi Artists Residency, New York and was recently invited as a guest critic for an online residency program Un/Mute presented by the European Union National Institute for Culture, New York. Amore has chaired several symposiums and presented her research at various conferences including, What is the Site of Art at Residency Unlimited, New York and the Anywhere ElsewhereConference at Parsons New School, New York, among others. She is also an Advisory Board Member of Deakin University’s Creative Arts Honors and Masters of Creative Arts, Melbourne, Australia. 

In addition to Amore’s scholarly research, she has over twenty years’ experience working with artists across curatorial, exhibition management and publications sectors, within commercial, museum and non-profit platforms. Working across both the United States and Australia, Amore has become an ambassador for Australian artists in the international field and for international artists in Australia. Amore was recently the Curator for the 2022 Conversations Sector and Director of VIP Programming, International Engagement for Melbourne Art Fair 2022, Melbourne, Australia and worked as a Curatorial Advisor for a public art commission in 2017 located in Melbourne, Australia, where she shortlisted artists including Jeppe Hein, Larry Bell and Sarah Oppenheimer. In the United States, Amore has assisted several galleries with curatorial implementation and editorial including, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia with the exhibition The Line of Optics — Between Perception and Architecture in the work of Edna Andrade for the ADAA, New York and Structures of Abstraction for The Armory, New York which included artists Lynda Benglis, Joanna Pousette-Dart and David Row. Amore also worked with a private gallery in New York for over four years representing leading contemporary artists. 

Amore co-founded, alongside curator William Stover, a non-profit arts organization and research forum, Re-Sited in 2016, New York, that re-evaluates the architecture of “site” and the “conceptual space”— its materiality, particularities and relationship to the work of art. Re-Sited examines the spatial intersections between sculpture, architecture and site. As a collaborative the pair have curated several exhibitions in New York including, Sites of Knowledge at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, which examined spatial semiotics and language as a visual structure of knowledge, and included works by acclaimed artists Richard Artschwager, Henri Chopin, Michael Rakowitz, Enrico Isamu Ōyama and Sophie Tottie, and Traveling Spaces, a group exhibition featuring a series of site interventions and perceptual interruptions by Caroline Cloutier and Willem Besselink at VOLTA Artfair. The exhibition addressed ideas of “site” and “space” and questioned how we travel and move through space. Amore’s exhibitions have been featured in Artforum, Hyperallergic, among other publications.

In continuum to Amore’s examination into phenomenology and architectural structures, she curated a solo exhibition titled ThreeFold, 2016 on Australian installation artist Natasha Johns-Messenger, at El Museo de Los Sures, in New York, as part of the ISCP off-site program. ThreeFold was a large-scale site installation, an optical prism, predominantly made of mirrors and periscopic devices. Amore also produced an extensive catalogue essay alongside the artist’s solo exhibition Sitelines at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia. 

Emerging from a family of architects, Amore’s inquiry into the intersections of architecture, philosophy and sculpture began early. Her academic thesis Observing Observation was an extensive examination into the phenomenology of perception in the works by Doug Wheeler and James Turrell. Amore received a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She was previously awarded a B.A in Philosophy and a B.A in Creative Writing (Literature) and Art History (Minor) at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia, where she graduated with distinction. Following her undergraduate studies, Amore was selected to undertake the Gertrude Contemporary Emerging Writers Program, under the stewardship of Alexie Glass-Kantor (former Director of Gertrude Contemporary) and renowned author Ashley Crawford in Melbourne, Australia.

In Australia, Amore was a regular contributor to publications including, Art Monthly, Photofile among others. She was appointed the Creative Director and Senior Curator for a non-profit arts organization, NotFair, in Melbourne, Australia. Amore was invited to curate a large-scale exhibition Bal Taschit Thou Shalt Not Destroy at the Jewish Museum of Australia. The exhibition featured over thirty-five artists who examined early scripture including readings from the Torah, the Talmud, and biblical prescriptions about structures of knowledge and the environment. Amore also assisted the Australian team for the First Life Residency Project exhibition as part of the “Year of Australian Culture in China,” a cross-cultural residency project at the Xin Dong Space for Contemporary Art, Beijing. She was the Exhibitions Manager and Artist Liaison at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, Australia from over nine years where she managed Australia’s established artists including Robert Owen, Imants Tillers, Guan Wei, Pat Brassington, Janet Laurence, among many others.