Kit Hammonds teaches the Curating Contemporary Art course at the RCA and is also a freelance curator and writer based in London. He has extensive experience in exhibitions and events in public art organisations as well as alternative spaces. His research-orientated curatorial practice explores the potential of public spaces for counter-cultural activities.
He is interested in the appropriation of public space by institutions and individuals, and the nature of informal cultural production. At the heart of this are the interconnection of freedom of expression and ethical behaviour, as well as the social contract between government, economy and civil society. Hammonds is looking in particular at ways in which this is challenged through disobedience, and the alternatives such acts propose.
Kit Hammonds graduated in MA Visual Arts Administration at the Royal College of Art in 2000 and completed a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1997.
In 2009-10 Hammonds was acting director (maternity cover) of The Showroom (London), producing the exhibitions The Otolith Group: Otolith 3; Ruth Buchanan: Several Attentions; Emily Wardill: Gamekeepers without Game; Estrangement and Ulises Carrión: Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners.
From 2004-7 he was curator at the South London Gallery where his exhibitions included group projects The Weasel: Contemporary Art and Pop Music, 2007; Harold Offeh: The Mothership Collective, 2006 and solo exhibitions Alfredo Jaar: Politics of the Image, 2008; Thomas Zipp: Planet Caravan (catalogue), 2007; Mark Dion: Microcosmographia (catalogue and touring) 2005-6.
In both these roles he was also responsible for public programmes and organised a number of symposia, live art events and screenings at the venues. Previously he worked in various arts organisations on a freelance basis including the Royal Society of Arts, Whitechapel Gallery and Art Office (all London).
In 2004 he co-founded ‘Publish and Be Damned’, an ongoing project for the alternative production and distribution of artist-led publications.
From 2004 to 2008 he was London correspondent to Tema Celeste magazine and contributed some 40 plus articles and reviews. His critical writing has also appeared in Art Monthly; Visual Arts Ireland; A-N and Untitled. He is a trustee of Book Works, London.
In 2006 Kit Hammonds was awarded an Emerging Curator Stipend from the American Center Foundation and was the recipient of a Rio Tinto Travel Award in 2000. He won the Hayward Curatorial Open 2010.