Kay Cresswell Roberts: known professionally as Kay Roberts.

This archive is a selective view from seventies on. It is shown in sections by category not by date.

I had been interested in contemporary art since the 1960’s. As a teenager I was on the Tom Hudson Foundation Year in Leicester, a Bauhaus regime, something I did not enjoy & I dropped out. From aged 17 I lived in London, able to see the beginnings of conceptual & installation work first hand. David Medalla’s Signal Gallery being memorable.

Working for 3 years meant a full grant & a pre-diploma at West of England Art College, then Dip A.D. Fashion & Textiles at Birmingham College of Art, followed by ATD (Art Teachers Diploma) in 1971. Whilst a lecturer of print at West Bridgford College of Further Education, in Nottingham, I met Simon Cutts. We moved to London in 1973 and from a tiny house off the Old Kent Road started Coracle Press. Whilst in 50 Brymer Road I drew the Coracle motif and took photographs which later became framed works. The walls of the house were hung to ceiling with works by friends of Simon Cutt’s time in Nottingham: Martin Fidler, Stephen Skidmore and Stephen Duncalf alongside own  pieces.

In 1976 a shop nearby in Camberwell was renovated to make a gallery, we lived above & had a printing press in the basement.

The London art scenes being very small at that time, centred in Cork Street. It was suggested to me by Nicolas Logsdail, of Lisson Gallery, that London needed an art map, like the one in Paris. This was how new exhibitions of contemporary art came to be started in 1978. I was the publisher until 2000 & the number of galleries listed going from 24 to over 300. It was published every 2 months & initially I took 100 copies of each issue round on the bus to every gallery listed. In this way I became familiar with all the galleries in London that were showing contemporary art. A similar map/listings ELA (East London Arts) project was published with the artist Debbie Duffin.

All this background led to me working in the 1980’s for both Art in America & Journal of Art New York offices in Paris, it involved going to art fairs all over Europe. Meeting artists & getting an idea of the scope of European contemporary art.

After moving to Limehouse in 1985 the redevelopment of the area caused by Canary Wharf led me to initiate a project based on the flux around me. Actualites was not meant to be a continuing gallery but an opportunity to ask artists to become involved with the area to make works, one in the gallery & one outside. To deal with the locality & its people as well as a unique work in the gallery based on this area.

Perhaps because of the attention Actualites received, I subsequently joint curated Northern Adventures at St Pancras Station & Camden Art Centre and English Summer, in 5 locations in Northern Italy. I was the temporary gallery manager at Chisenhale Gallery during Rachel Whiteread’s installation Ghost. With the film maker Debby May the project yoyo recorded my interviews with Gustav Metzger and Corneliia Parker.

It became apparent to me that, just as new exhibitions of contemporary art had gone from letterpress to lithography, the next step was the web. After doing an MA in Interactive MultiMedia (RCA/LCC) I received a Churchill Travel Fellowship in 1976, to examine the Effects of New Technology on Art Institutions and Art Archives in the USA.  These research projects are featured here as distinct from my work with artists and galleries.

The first interactive version of new exhibitions of contemporary art, eventually achieving a system where galleries put in their own information. This innovation after 30 years of cut & paste.

When Daniel Newburg took over the publication of New Exhibitions of Contemporary Art I moved to Paris for 10 years. Commissioned to review exhibitions & interview artists, to be published in art magazines & on the web.

The archive therefore contains many reviews and interviews alongside gallery projects, and I am very grateful to all those artists who have agreed to the use of their work.

Kay Roberts

London

2026