Author: Lizzy Vartanian Collier

Lizzy Vartanian Collier aka Gallery Girl is a writer and curator based in London. Her work has been featured in publications including Dazed, Hyperallergic and Vogue Arabia. She was curator of Perpetual Movement during AWAN Festival 2018 and in 2019 had a residency at the Lab at Darat Al Funun in Amman, Jordan. She has also worked with Armenia Art Fair for its inaugural edition and previously worked as an editor at I.B.Tauris Publishers. In 2019 she co-founded Arsheef, Yemen’s first contemporary art gallery. She has given workshops at Manara Culture in Amman, Jordan and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK. As of 2020 she is currently in law school, with the ambition of greater understanding the intersection between art and the law.

Rosemarie Castoro, Wanda Czelkowska and Lydia Okumura @ Thaddaeus Ropac

July 25, 2018.Reading time 11 minutes.

‘“Castoro, Castoro, I saw your paintings at Johnny’s. I liked them very much. I thought you were a boy” (Leo Castelli). I turned around and went back to Spring Street producing my next body of work. My energies in the world were for those not yet born…Cezanne didn’t live on institutional acceptance. Time validates and […]

Scripted Reality @ Lawrie Shabibi

July 17, 2018.Reading time 10 minutes.

We are currently living in a time in which the news feels like fiction. What may have sounded fictitious a handful of years a go is now reality, and what once had the potential to shock has now become commonplace, expected even. Dubai-based gallery Lawrie Shabibi’s first London pop-up presented an exhibition titled Scripted Reality, […]

Gallery Girl meets Isabel Getty

July 10, 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

‘I’m a big fan of Egon Schiele’, says Isabel Getty, ‘I’ve always loved how he would play with different mediums and give a strong Byzantine effect to his work, making it almost child-like.’ Getty’s 2018 summer exhibition comprised two levels of figurative artworks. Encompassing paintings and drawings in ink, pencil and watercolours, the show first […]

Mask @ Kamel Mennour

July 4, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

The mask is an object that can both conceal and divulge information about its wearer. At times a disguise and others a means of protection, it can also fright or shock. The current exhibition Mask at Kammel Mennour reveals the many different sides of the facial covering through sculpture and photography. While the mask is […]

Musings on Curating: 10 Lessons Learnt

June 27, 2018.Reading time 13 minutes.

The terms ‘curate’, ‘curator’ and ‘curation’ have taken on a whole new meaning in the last few years. You can now easily find ‘curated’ playlists, ‘curated’ shop windows and even ‘curated’ magazines. However, long before ‘curated’ music festivals and ‘curated’ menus became commonplace, the term ‘curator’ began its life – in the English language at […]