JMS is a curator, artist and creative producer. Underpinning these entangled practices is an understanding of art as an embodied encounter between self and other, place and mystery. Joseph’s work explores performance / art as a contemporary modality of ritual, an / other way of experiencing and inhabiting body / space / time, as a technology of processing / mourning / desiring / communing / dreaming.
Expressions of this belief / research have emerged as performances, films and texts, as curatorial and producing projects, as collaborative contexts, talks and workshops.
Much of their / his independent work is held by Future Ritual, a long term curatorial, research and organising practice initiated in 2017. Since 2024, Joseph has worked as Curator, Public Practice at Tate.
Previous roles have included those at Live Art Development Agency, The Place and ]performance s p a c e[. JMS is also co-founder and co-director of VSSL studio.
Across all this work, Joseph remains committed to the live and embodied practices which welcome complexity, senstivity, tension and difficulty, and which call towards the more raw edges of experience.
joseph@futureritual.co.uk
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Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos, WILLENDORF, Tate Modern, 2025. Photo by Marco Berardi.
LOVE + RESISTANCE
Curated in response to Tate’s exhibition programme - The 80s: Photographing Britain, Turner Prize 2024, Leigh Bowery! and ARTIST ROOMS: Helen Chadwick.
• curation • Tate • 2025 •
A season of events reflecting on the cultural memory of the 1980s and the impacts of artistic activism and community building. The programme included:
After Taboo, an evening of queer counterculture with performances by Ron Athey with Hermes Pittakos, and Poulomi Desai with Andy Kumar, Jaivant Patel, Ms. Mohammed, Osman Yosefzada and Raisa Kabir
Through the Lens of Time, a dialogue between Ajamu X, Campbell Addy, J.G. Basdew and Stephen Isaac Wilson
Bow Gamelan Ensemble: Maps of Other Possibilities, an evening of film and conversation remembering the great noise of Bow Gamelan Ensemble
Hostile Environments: what happens to the land happens to us, an evening convened by Visible Justice and featuring performances and poetry by Khalid Abdalla and Sunnah Khan, and presentations by Imani Jacqueline Brown, Radha D’Souza and Nadine El-Enany
Maximum Everything, a conversation exploring excess and (un)respectability in club performance with Rose Cory, Kazuko Hohki, Phoebe Patey-Ferguson and Tamm Reynolds
Spirit of the Times: Photographing the 80s, an afternoon of readings rememberings and reflections from artists Grace Lau, Jem Southam, mitra tabrizian, Rosy Martin and Roy Mehta
In Loving Memory of Work, an evening exploring the visual culture of dissent with Craig Oldham, Sally Barton and Jarvis Cocker
> Tate: Love + Resistance
Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos, WILLENDORF, Tate Modern, 2025. Photo by Marco Berardi.
Poulomi Desai, Storms of the Heart: Queering the Cosmos of Memory, Tate Modern, 2025. Photos by Marco Berardi.
practices: curation / film / performance / writing
contexts: Future Ritual / Tate / VSSL studio / ]ps[
years: 2016 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 /