Art CV

Exhibitions and performances

2021 Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House (group)
2021 Uncertain Data, FACT, Liverpool (group)
2019 All His Ghosts Must Do My Bidding, Wysing Arts Centre (group)
2019 Silly Symposium, Ex-Baldessarre, Bedford
2018 Marriage is Punishment for Shoplifting in Some Countries, Flat Time House, London (performance lecture)
2017 Award Machine Reading Group, Grrrr! London (event)
2017 Truth Machine, Grrrr! London (group)
2016 London’s Hottest Grassroots Arts Spaces (mail project)
2015 LUSTRE FABRICS, Saltaire Arts Trail (solo)
2014 The Pure Ideology Personal Brand Workshop, Legion TV, London (solo)

Writing and publications

2021 Excavate: The Wonderful & Frightening World of The Fall, Faber & Faber (co-editor, with Bob Stanley)
2020 Wysing Broadcasts: current research playlist
2019 The Fields Here Are Full of Ghosts, a limited edition looseleaf publication released by Wysing Arts Centre’s Wysing Polyphonic label
2019 Pivotal Moments, ed. Sonya Dyer, SPACE/London Creative Network (contributor)
2019 “Becoming Baby: Stupidity, boredom, time and escape” in Doggerland: A reader on Sociality & Idiocy (essay)
2018 – ongoing Accompanying essays for exhibitions at Ex-Baldessarre, Bedford, curated by Andy Holden: Estate of Hermione; Silly Symphony (Ollie Dook, Elly Thomas, Andy Holden); Sour Persimmons Chasm (group)
2018 Some Notes on Wayne’s World, Cruelty, Kindness and Radical Vulnerability, The Bad Vibes Club Reader, ed. Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau and Beth Bramich (essay)
2017 – ongoing Writing about contemporary art (essays, profiles, contemporary art reviews, books) for various publications including: Burlington Contemporary, The Wire, Tribune, Corridor 8, Art Licks, This is Tomorrow, Garageland
2017 Marriage is Punishment for Shoplifting in Some Countries (email newsletter)
2017 Digital Voodoo, or Tragedy Plus Time, Laugh magazine #3 (text piece)
2014 At Home He’s a Tourist, Lots of Planets Have a North (text piece)
2014 Art Theory Urban Dictionary, Hoax #3 (text piece)

Readings and talks

2021 Festival of Words, Halifax
2021 Excavate! Panel discussion with Adelle Stripe and Bob Stanley, Manchester Literature Festival, HOME, Manchester
2021 Excavate! Book launch, Rough Trade, London
2020 Print Perform Present, The Tetley, Leeds (reading)
2019 Doggerland x Montez Press Radio, live broadcast (archived as Doggerland Podcast #5)
2018 Wysing Arts Centre residency event: Reading & in conversation with Lucy Mercer (more here)
2018 Shady Todmorden #3, curated by Roy Claire Potter (reading)
2018 Pivotal Moments (Space Arts / London Creative Network): Reading & in conversation with Donna Lynas
2016 Children are the Shock Troops of Gentrification, Liverpool Biennial (reading)
2014 Lots of Planets Have a North, The Tetley, Leeds (reading)

Research and editorial

2021 Editing and typesetting, Collected Free Labour, Andy Holden (book)
2020 Researcher, Beano exhibition, Somerset House
2017 Researcher, Abstractions of Holderness, Bob Stanley/Esther Johnson film commission for Mind On The Run, Basil Kirchin weekend for Hull 2017 City of Culture

Awards and residencies

Selected press

Bookforum (Excavate reviewed by Sasha Frere-Jones; “my favorite expansion on Smith’s work is Tessa Norton’s essay about Smith as his own school of education, the vision of a man presenting a syllabus as rock songs (or vice versa).”)
Corridor 8 (Uncertain Data exhibition reviewed by Leah Binns).
4 Columns (Excavate reviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu; “The Fall’s border crossings, their provocations and productiveness, their edge and endlessness: Norton, in her essay, argues that they’re less a band than a counter syllabus.”)
Louder Than War (Excavate reviewed by Audrey Golden; “Excavate! feels like a Mark E. Smith version of the Arcades Project—never finished, and always producing new meaning”.)
Backlisted podcast (Excavate reviewed by Andy Miller)
Bigmouth (podcast – interview with me and Bob Stanley)
Little Atoms (podcast – interview with me and Bob Stanley)
Word In Your Ear: The Folklore of The Fall (podcast – interview with me and Bob Stanley)
Bob Stanley and Tessa Norton present a Front Room Family Disco, Faber Social, May 2020
“The making of a truly radical arts centre buried in the Cambridgeshire countryside”, interviewed for feature about Wysing Arts Centre, Louise Benson, Elephant Magazine, July 2019
Feature on All His Ghosts Must Do My Bidding, FAD Magazine, July 2019

Education

Employment

Freelance writer, artist / marketing and communications for arts organisations including Yorkshire Sculpture International, The Modernist Society, Arts Marketing Association, Siobhan Davies Dance / BALTIC and more.
Board member at LUX film.
Past: Cecil Sharp House / English Folk Dance and Song Society, LSE.