About Jon

Jon Blackwood is a curator, lecturer and writer specialising in contemporary art. He has a particular interest in contemporary art in the Western Balkans, having lived both in Sarajevo and Skopje from 2011-14. He is now based in North-East Scotland.

He has curated exhibitions in Cetinje, London, Sarajevo, Skopje, Zagreb, Tallinn, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and has experience of working with performance, installation, sound, video and relational art, in addition to more traditional media- painting and sculpture.

Jon’s particular interests are in contemporary art and activism, contemporary art and protest cultural ecology, psychogeography and peripherality. Jon is passionate about football and is working on ideas relating to the crossovers between sport and fine art as disciplines.

Jon has published six books, and numerous articles. Most recently he has published Introduction to Contemporary Art in Bosnia-Herzegovina (duplex 100m2, Sarajevo, 2015) and Critical Art in Contemporary Macedonia (malagalerija, Skopje, 2016). His most recent curatorial experience includes two shows at Summerhall, Edinburgh in 2017, and two shows each  for Look Again festival, and Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen in 2018/19.

Having taught at various universities in the UK and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jon is now a Reader in Contemporary Art, and Research Lead, at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. He is a member of the IKT- International Association for Curators of Contemporary Art, and the Association for Art History.

You can follow Jon on academia.edu, on Instagram, and on twitter.