After Kirsty Ogg graduated from the sculpture department at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 1990s, she returned to her hometown of Glasgow to participate in the DIY scene, setting up the now infamous artist-run space Transmission. It was during this time that she discovered her love and understanding of making exhibitions with other artists in a curatorial capacity. In 1996 she left Transmission to work as an independent curator until joining the Whitechapel Gallery in 2009. The artists she has worked range from household names to fledgling talents who have since become household names, such as Jim Lambie and Eva Rothschild, whose first solo exhibitions she staged.

This is Kirsty’s second year on the Emerging Artists Award judging panel. Her approach, she says, is to “keep a totally open mind. The interesting thing about this award is that you’re looking for artists defining a new territory or working in a new way. I think that's the role of the curator...you're always looking for the things that you don't know, the things you are less familiar with are the things that offer a fresh approach to looking at the world that exists around us'