Marie Foulston (born 1982 or 1983)[1] is an independent video games curator. From 2015 to 2019, she was the first curator of video games at theVictoria and Albert Museum, organising the museum's first major exhibition on video games,Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt (2018–2019).
In 2011, Foulston co-founded the UKindie game collective The Wild Rumpus, which organised international events showcasingindie games to different types of audiences.
Foulston held jobs in film and literature and was a producer atPenguin Books before she co-founded the London-basedindie game collective The Wild Rumpus in 2011.[2][3] According to the group's website, Foulston, and co-founders Ricky Haggett, Richard Hogg, and v buckenham, were motivated by a desire to expose indie games to unfamiliar audiences and "to turn traditional perceptions of videogames on their head."[4][5] The Wild Rumpus held parties in London, Toronto, and San Francisco, among other cities, intended to bring people together to play social and physical multiplayer video games in anightclub environment.[3][6] The group hosted more than ten events;[4] on one occasion, it held aJohann Sebastian Joust tournament in aCold War-erafishing vessel.[2]
After aVictoria and Albert Museum (V&A) curator viewed Foulston's presentation at theGame Developers Conference in 2014 on "Curating Video Game Culture",[2][7] she went on to join the museum in the following year as its first curator of video games.[1] Foulston worked on the museum's Rapid Response collection, which contains newer objects of creative or cultural importance.[8] She was lead curator of the museum's first major exhibition on video games,Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, held from September 2018 to February 2019,[9][10] which examined eight video games from the 2000s onward, a time period when it began to get easier for more people to design, distribute, and play video games due to advances in technology.[10][11] Concept art, game prototypes, and larger installations were divided into the three sections: the "Design" section showcased interesting examples ofvideo game design; "Disrupt" examined video games that provide commentary on social and political issues and push for change; and several short films on the video game community made up the "Play" section.[9][10][11] Foulston and Kristian Volsing edited a collection of essays to accompany the exhibition.[12]
In a review ofVideogames inThe Times, Tom Whipple wrote that the exhibition went "some way" in giving the "oft‑derided art" the attention it deserves, though he felt it lacked more popular video games.[13]The Daily Telegraph art criticMark Hudson gave the exhibition three out of five stars, and criticised the exhibition's lack of interactivity and focus on the "politically aware cutting-edge" of video games.[14] Hudson felt that, despite the shortcomings, the exhibition was a "visually spectacular, mind-opening view" into an "alien world" for a "games sceptic" like himself.[14]The Guardian video games editor Keza MacDonald gave the exhibition five stars, writing that the exhibition showcases video games not as media outlets have traditionally viewed them, but as gamers have, as a "multifarious art form" and "force for change."[11]
Foulston left the V&A in 2019.[15]
Foulston was a panel speaker at the experimental games festival, Now Play This, held atSomerset House in 2019,[16] and was named guest director of its 2020 iteration.[17]
Foulston directed a documentary,The Grannies, created with content fromRed Dead Redemption 2.[18] In a format similar to a travel documentary,The Grannies follows a group ofMelbourne artists exploring places in the game that the game developer did not intend players access.[18][19] Originally commissioned for Now Play This 2020 in the format of a "multi-channel installation film", it was screened as a short film at the 2021International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, theLondon Short Film Festival, and the Milan Machinima Festival, due to theCOVID-19 pandemic.[18][19][20] TheACMI inMelbourne, Australia, exhibited the documentary in its original format in 2022.[18]
In May 2020, during the worldwideCOVID-19 lockdowns, Foulston organized a "Party in a SharedGoogle Doc".[21] Writing inDezeen magazine, historian Holly Nielsen found Foulston's event to be a good example of people "repurposing existing software and systems to provide ways of interacting with each other that are more tailored to their own social needs."[22]
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