Peta is the Director and Senior Curator at University of Queensland Art Museum.

Her creative practice is currently attentive to transdisciplinary conversations focussed on blue research, working closely with artists and scientists to understand the psycho-social, political and gendered dimensions of coastal wetlands, sea country, intertidal zones, aquaculture and the regeneration and articulation of these sites. Her work has always involved a large network of long-term collaborators and thinkers, and friends, with a keen interest in distributed curatorial work towards activism. Currently, she is the Director and Senior Curator at University of Queensland Art Museum (Meanjin/Brisbane) where she is collaborating on Blue Assembly and The Clam’s Kiss / Sogi a le faisua with Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi.

She has held various roles at CCA (San Francisco), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane) and at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, including Co-Director of Creative Residencies, Visual + Digital Art Department and full-time Curator of Walter Phillips Gallery/Banff International Curatorial Institute (BICI). Independently she has curated exhibitions at ISCP (New York), Oakland Museum of California (Oakland), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art (San Francisco), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco) and Esker Foundation (Calgary). 

She has worked closely with artists to produce exhibitions of their work for the first time in North America and Australia, such as Charlotte Moth, Caroline Monnet, Celia Perrin Sidarous, Elise Rasmussen, Mel O’Callaghan and Elisheva Biernoff.

She writes and edits regularly in her professional capacity, but upon invitation from artist collaborators often contributes experimental texts and poetry to accompany their work. The forthcoming monograph for Montreal-based Algonquin artist Caroline Monnet features her short story entitled Mirror for the future. She has published in this capacity alongside artists Maggie Groat, Mel O’Callaghan, Jenine Marsh, Helena Lopez Sanz and also for Ola El Khalidi’s literary compendium She would roll petite cigarettes, petite like her. 

Her more traditional writing has appeared in publications such as C Magazine, Canadian Art, Fillip, San Francisco Arts Quarterly, Rearviews, Institutions by Artists, and On Apology among others. She holds a Masters in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, a Bachelors (Hons) in Creative Industries from Queensland University of Technology and was the recipient of the 2014 Curator Award from ISCP in New York.

All text and images are courtesy Peta Rake unless otherwise stated.