I am a Boorloo-based writer and curator interested in the convergence of critical and creative discourses surrounding contemporary art, and how to respond to local practice and politics. Currently I am the Collections Officer and Art Consultant for the Australian Government’s Artbank initiative in Western Australia.

In this place I have worked on projects and been part of programs for organisations including Tura New Music, Perth Festival, the Centre for Stories, PEN Perth, and been a Board Member of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Along with Melissa McGrath, I am one of the founders of Semaphore, a volunteer run publication about art from Western Australia.

When I was based in Melbourne, from 2005 to 2016, I worked with many arts organisations including Australia Council for the Arts (as an external researcher), Monash University Museum of Art, Creative Victoria, MPavilion, City of Melbourne, Next Wave, un Magazine, and Melbourne Fringe. Between 2019 and 2021, I was a founding Editor (with Jeremy Eaton) of Currents Journal, a peer review publication for early career researchers, and a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia. In 2017, I was a Team Leader and Supervisor of the Australian Pavilion at Venice Biennale. From 2016 until 2017, I was the Writer and Editor of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale based in Kerala, India where I wrote and edited the Biennale’s guide and catalogue. In 2016, I presented a series of radio plays for the Next Wave Festival, and was one of six artists taking part in the Biennale of Sydney’s experimental writing project, The Bureau of Writing. I was the 2014 London Arts Writers Resident at ACME Studios. From 2009 to 2013, I was Program Curator at West Space, and founding Editor (with Rowan McNaught) of their online publication the West Space Journal until 2015. I hold a BA (Honours) and MA from the University of Melbourne.


Contact me

klfliedner@gmail.com 


Images^ Frames of ReferenceSempahore (Kelly Fliedner and Melissa McGrath), conversations and writing with website and printed materials (2021). This project was created for the Fair Isle exhibition presented by DADAA and Perth Festival, and curated by Katherine Wilkinson. Photos by Bo Wong



Images^ Forming in the Pupil of an Eye, written by Kelly Fliedner and Sudarshan Shetty; edited by Andreas Koller and Robert Wood; designed by Marietta Eugster and David Keshavjee, published by the Kochi Biennale Foundation, Kochi (2016). 


Image^ speaking at a Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Hatched public program (2019). Photo by Pixel Poetry







Mark