November Paynter studied Architectural Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture and went on to complete a Masters degree in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. She worked as an exhibition organiser at the Barbican and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, where she coordinated the first 'Beck's Futures Student Video Prize' in 2000. While at the RCA, Paynter co-curated 'FAIR', to which 14 international arts organisations were invited to represent their activities and artists. Working with Galerist from İstanbul she also managed the design and installation for the exhibition.

Paynter is currently working as a curator at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, İstanbul where her curatorial projects include "Coming Up", "Making Space" and "Tracey İstanbulda", the first solo exhibition by Tracey Emin in Turkey. To coincide with the 8th International İstanbul Biennial, Paynter curated with Joanna Stella-Sawicka the record collection "We'll meet you in the Lobby" hosted by the Büyük Londra Oteli, she also initiated the magazine bkz. with designer Andrew Foxall.

In 2003 she was the first curator to be awarded the Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l'Arte - EnterPrize, a prize given to the best curatorial proposal presented by a curator under 30. Her proposal Another Zero was realised at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo in Bergamo, this year. Most recently, Paynter was selected to curate a programme of new media work from the Middle East for "How Can You Resist, Freewaves, LA".

Paynter writes for a number of international arts magazines including Parachute and ArtReview, is the İstanbul Art Correspondent for Contemporary and compiles the monthly art section for Time Out, İstanbul.

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Esra Sarıgedik

Esra Sarigedik lives in İstanbul. From 1994 until 1999 Esra Sarigedik studied at the Sculpture Department at the faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in İstanbul, since then she has held various assistant positions for different art institutions.

Sarigedik served as assistant to the editor of the 5th International İstanbul Biennial catalogue in 1997. Between 1998-2001 she worked as a volunteer for Vasif Kortun at the İstanbul Contemporary Art Project which included overseeing the design of the magazine RG and supervising the production and printing process.

She worked as assistant to the director and also as coordinator of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center from its foundation and until 2002. During that period she coordinated a series of lectures held at Platform, amongst them lectures by Carlos Basualdo, Maria Lind, Hou Hanru and Mika Hannula. She was also the exhibition coordinator for the following exhibitions: Carsten Nicolai snow.noise (2001), Haluk Akakce Nothing (2002) and Gabriel Lester The Gift of Gab (2002).

In 2003 she worked as an assistant curator with Charles Esche at Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmö, Sweden and as the exhibition coordinator of "Definitely Maybe" which was realised at the same time as the 8th International İstanbul Biennial. In 2004 she served as the assistant curator for the 3rd Berlin Biennial curated by Ute Meta Bauer.

She has given talks at Berlin Fine Arts Academy, Trondheim Art Academy (Norway) and OCA ( Office for Contemporary Art Norway). Her most recent curatorial project titled "Somebody Else's Problem" was at the Bilsar Building, İstanbul in 20th November 2004.