Creative Open Day: Exhibition Making

Our next Creative Open Day sees us exploring curation of the current exhibition - this is an opportunity to have your say!

This is a free drop-in workshop. Feel welcome to come for 20 minutes or the full day!

Join us for the next Creative Open Day on Saturday 21 February 11am to 3pm. We will be led by curator, Gisselle Garon Casas through a drop-in workshop discovering what makes an exhibition a space of creativity, inspiration and exploration – with the opportunity to curate the space yourself. Working with a floor plan of the gallery you will be within, reimagine the show from your own point of view, using the artworks on display.

We will also work on writing creative, emotive, and personal captions for the artworks in the exhibition. These will be published on the Focal Point Gallery’s website and shared within the exhibition itself.

This workshop invites participants to see S for Southend 2026 in a different way, and become part of a collective curatorial process of evaluation, rethinking, and championing the work of Southend’s community.

About Artist:

Gisselle Girón Casas (Lima, Peru) is a curator and art historian working between the UK and Peru. Her curatorial practice focuses on the development of long-term projects that foster spaces of trust and intimacy, where the boundaries between curating and artistic creation become blurred. Her current research centres on contemporary Latin American practices, both from the region and from diasporic voices, with a particular interest in queer, cute and post-digital aesthetics, as well as in installation art.

She has contributed to collective projects such as the digital platform Gifggenheim and the artist-led space Oficina M20 - Hotel Savoy. Her recent curatorial projects include Taking a Bow. Haciendo una reverencia (2025) by Bryan Giuseppi Rodriguez Cambana at Art Exchange, Colchester; Hiato en el tiempo (2024) by Gianine Tabja at ICPNA San Miguel, Lima; Drama Shopping Center (2024) by Marisabel Arias at ICPNA Miraflores, Lima; and the digital exhibition Prisioneras del Amor y el costo de otras economías invisibles (2021) at Centro Cultural Universidad del Pacífico, Lima.

She is currently Assistant Curator for the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) and the University Art Collections at the University of Essex, Colchester.