Elsiemaud is the name of a street in Ladywell. It is also the name of a curatorial project founded by Adrian McDonald in 2026.
Elsiemaud is an independent curatorial and advisory project concerned with emotion, atmosphere and the associative possibilities of images. Its curatorial approach begins with feeling, and prioritises using both artwork and intuition to establish a narrative, aesthetic affinity and to create moments of recognition that are difficult to place: déjà vu, familiarity or emotional identification without an immediately obvious source.
Adrian McDonald is a curator and writer whose practice explores the articulation of working-class emotional and cultural experience through contemporary curatorial practice. Drawing on sociological theories of language, class, and cultural legitimacy, he is particularly interested in forms of expression that exist beyond or in excess of conventional vocabulary, and in how curatorial frameworks might create space for experiences that are traditionally illegible within institutional contexts.
Adrian has a BA in Fine Art with History of Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art. He has previously worked for leading institutions such as Tate, Saatchi Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery, and has worked closely with Beers, Delphian, JGM, and Stephen Friedman, amongst others.
Nine to Five is a London-based curatorial collective founded in 2026 by Madeleine Challis, Sophia Fisher and Adrian McDonald. Graduates of the Royal College of Art, they draw on their individual upbringings outside the metropolitan sphere— Kent, Indianapolis and Merseyside— to create a collective practice that explores nostalgia, romance, leisure and memory as experiences shaped by environment, class, temporality and contemporary economics. Their shared interest in analogue media, semi-rural and suburban aesthetics, and the rhythms of everyday life informs a curatorial approach that considers how intimate experiences of place and time can transcend individual circumstance and become collectively recognisable.