Paula Booker brings her training as an artist and responsibilities as a settler on Indigenous territory into her curatorial practice. From 2004-2006, she co-founded and ran the experimental art space Canary Gallery in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has written and edited art publications and journals, and was Publications Manager at Enjoy Gallery, Wellington, 2006-2009. A recipient of a 2009 Goethe Institut Cultural Exchange scholarship to Germany, Paula freelanced and studied in Berlin. At the New Zealand Film Archive from 2012-2016, Paula curated onsite and offsite exhibitions and public film screenings of contemporary and historic moving image, testing ideas with audiences in time. In 2015, she completed a Bachelor of Media Arts Honours (First Class) at Wintec, Hamilton, exploring space and affect theory in relation to exhibition making. Since 2015, she has been a contributor in the campaign to #ProtectIhumātao; ancestral Māori land in Auckland.
Since 2016, Paula has been a grateful visitor on Coast Salish Territory, recently curating projects for AHVA Gallery, Richmond Public Art, and the Or Gallery, that unsettled notions of surveillance and place. Since 2017 she has been Curatorial Assistant at Richmond Art Gallery and on the Board of Directors at UNIT/PITT Projects. In August 2018, Paula completed the Critical and Curatorial Studies MA program at the University of British Columbia. Paula recently co-directed and produced the short film Woven featuring Debra Sparrow, tracing the resurgence of Coast Salish weaving, upholding traditions and relationships with the land.
