Kellie Riggs is an independent curator, writer, lecturer and fine jeweler with a background in researching art jewelry and craft-based processes. Viewing curating as a generative creative practice, she is currently most interested in notions of making as being, the absurdity of reference culture and “sleeper cell trends”, and the intersections of commodity and art.
Kellie's most recent projects include co-curator of design Triennial Objects: USA 2024 with New York gallery R & Company, a major American design survey with nearly 100 objects by 55 visionary makers, challanging traditionally understood boundaries between fine art, craft, and design; and Bushcrafters: Making / Making Do at Second Act Gallery, London, which brings together seven British artists primarily from the North of England with 7 international makers to discuss relative concepts of the adhoc, solutions for non-problems or fleeing needs, and contemporary dread and survival.
Previous projects include Under the Wobble Moon, Objects form the Capricious Age, at Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany (April – August 2022), which was American designer Misha Kahn’s first solo museum show, and his largest presentation of works to date. In 2022 Kellie was also at the Dallas Museum of Art where she assisted with the exhibition Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity. In 2019 Kellie was invited as a guest curator at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, where she curated Non-Stick Nostalgia: Y2K Retrofuturism in Contemporary Jewelry, which exhibited twenty-nine international millennial art jewelers. The large-scale show was a timely, critically acclaimed project that discussed analog vs. digital identity formation, self-actualization through image and adornment and virtual alter egos. Kellie is also the creator of the reoccurring artist-run exhibition FOTOCOPY, which since 2018 has had editions in Munich, New York, Venice and Amsterdam. In 2016 she co-curated the exhibition CULT at the Design Museum den Bosch (formally the Stedelijk Musuem ‘s-Hertogenbosch), NL, which dealt with the elusive ways jewelry relates to participation and belonging.
As a writer and editor, Kellie has contributed to an array of national and international publications over the last ten years, namely Dutch magazine and platform Current Obsession, for whom she was Editor from 2015 – 2018. She has also been a visiting lecturer at St. Lucas Antwerpen, SUNY New Paltz, and more, including part time faculty at Rhode Island School of Design. She was awarded a Fulbright Grant to Italy in 2011 where she is still primarily based and maintains a bench practice making custom gold jewelry. She received her BFA in Jewelry + Metalsmithing at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, and an MA in Visual Art Administration at New York University in 2020.
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director of Second Act Gallery, London 2024
co-curator x OBJECTS: USA 2024
x N-SN 2019