All Conference Panels - AAANZ | The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand

The 2022 AAANZ annual conference DEMONSTRATIONS includes a diverse range of thematic panels and open sessions alongside keynotes, workshops and book launches.

All current panels to be hosted at the conference are listed below. To look up the schedule, visit aaanz22.live

Browse by Panel Title

1. The Unwritten Histories of Iconoclasm in Australia: Actors, Methods and Theory
2. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (1)
3. Demonstrating Attention: inviting agency, conjuring co-creation, and transforming preconceptions with the more-than-human
4. Queer Antidotes: Specificity in Theory and Practice
5. Neoliberalism and the Visual: Notes on a Politics of Refusal (1)
6. Embodied material transformations (1)
7. Museums and Risk
8. Venus in Tullamarine: Norman Lindsay Now
9. Other Australian Stories In Britain 1920-1960
10. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (2)
11. Coaxing chaos: spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary art (1)
12. Demonstrations: The Body Across Borders (1)
13. Neoliberalism and the Visual: Notes on a Politics of Refusal (2)
14. Embodied material transformations (2)
15. A Politics of Obfuscation: Art, Class and the Dematerialisation of Demonstration
16. Machine Metaphors in Art: Asserting Selfhood
17. Bernard Smith’s European Vision and the South Pacific
18. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (3)
19. Coaxing chaos: spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary art (2)
20. Demonstrations: The Body Across Borders
21. [No panel scheduled]
22. Art and Design in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Future
23. Avant-Garde Demonstrations: Radical Exhibition Culture from Fringe Experimentation to State Propaganda
24. Machine Metaphors in Art: Creative Agencies
25. Agency, Country and Place: encounters with photography
26. Misdirected Unrealism
27. Art History – Old Tropes, New Criticality
28. Demonstrations of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art (1)
29. Walking as Demonstration
30. Making spells to break the spell
31. The Past is Another Country: 50 years after the Whitlam Cultural Revolution
32. Sculpture Exhibitions as Demonstrations of Revisionist Histories
33. Adorning Indigenous bodies: Maori, Pasifika and other Indigenous perspectives
34. Medieval and Early Modern Art and Visual Culture
35. Why we should care: Art Writing and care ethics (1)
36. Demonstrations of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art (2)
37. Round Table Panel: Embodied Consciousness
38. Tastes of Justice: the politics of food-art practices in Asia and Australia (1)
39. OPEN SESSION
40. “Watch me attack!”: Violence and Visual Culture in Premodern Wars
41.
42. Tasteful Exhibitionism – Early Modern Collecting, Commissioning and Display
43. Why we should care: Art Writing and care ethics (2)
44. Solidarity as Method: Hong Kong visual culture and its diaspora
45. Recentring: Towards a More Diverse Ecology of Contemporary Art
46. Tastes of Justice: the politics of food-art practices in Asia and Australia (2)
47. Demonstrating limits and possibilities through conceptual practices
48. Brunelleschi’s Demonstration of Space
49. NFTs production, distribution, recognition, ownership, and collection
50. Prints and Printmaking: Past, Present, and Future (1)
51. Collaboration and art history (1)
52. Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda
53. Soft Actions (1)
54. Children’s Museum Education: Transformation and Innovation through Creative Practice and Collaboration
55. Referendum (Machinery Provisions) (Third Iteration)
56. Prints and Printmaking: Past, Present, and Future (2)
57. Collaboration and art history (2)
58. Feminist creative practice research: methods, motives and meaning
59. Soft Actions (2)
60. Swap-Meet of Hope

1. The Unwritten Histories of Iconoclasm in Australia: Actors, Methods and Theory

Convenor(s):

Nikolas Orr, University of Newcastle, Dr José Antonio González Zarandona

Speakers:

Travis De Vries, Dr Julie Gough, Nikolas Orr, University of Newcastle, Dr José Antonio González Zarandona

Abstract:

The term iconoclasm has evolved to include all kinds of images and practices. Yet, through this expansion, theories of iconoclasm remain rooted in European histories of Byzantium, the Protestant Reformation, French Revolution or the fall of the USSR. In contrast, histories of iconoclasm in (and from) European settler colonies are largely unwritten. This situation has led experts, such as David Freedberg, to try to explain recent anti-racist and anti-colonial destruction through their work on entirely different historical periods. How useful, though, are existing theories of iconoclasm for understanding the destruction and defacement of cultural heritage and monuments in Australia? How do these theories stand up against real cases of contemporary iconoclastic challenges to colonialism as practised by First Nations artists? In answering these questions, as theorists of iconoclasm we must face the limits of our own knowledge; we must re-test our hypotheses and study cases on their own terms. We, therefore, invited some of the most active iconoclasts in Australia – First Nations contemporary artists – to reflect on the motives, targets and treatments that animate their work. Our aim is to open up the field to scrutiny in order that iconoclast and scholar of iconoclasm might reshape theory together.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

2. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University

Speakers:

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University, Dr Rebecca Rice, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Dr Helen Hughes, Monash University

Abstract:

Women artists and designers remain relatively unknown when compared to their male counterparts even when they were well known within their lifetimes. This is despite the publication of numerous pioneering feminist art histories including those of Cheryl Southernan and Anne Kirker in New Zealand and Joan Kerr and Jeanette Hoorne in Australia. Recent exhibitions such as ‘Know My Name’ held at the National Gallery of Australia (2021-2022) and ‘We Do this’ held at the Christchurch art gallery (2018) have addressed this lack of knowledge to some extent. However, there is still an urgent need to recover and further research these lost women, their histories and their works. This series of panels invites contributors working on women artists and designers from Australia and New Zealand to submit papers that recover these lost histories, expand known histories, or reconsider ‘the canon’ in order to include women whose opportunities within the fields of arts and ‘crafts’ were limited when compared to their male counterparts.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

3. Demonstrating Attention: inviting agency, conjuring co-creation, and transforming preconceptions with the more-than-human

Convenor(s):

Samantha Dennis, University of Tasmania

Speakers:

Samantha Dennis, University of Tasmania, Sonja Hindrum, University of Tasmania, Heather Hesterman

Abstract:

Attention, the action of applying the mind to a subject/object, is inherently situational as well as bilateral. Artistic research has tacit capacity to demonstrate attention through modes of process, enactment, and re-enactment. After all, art has unrelenting power to invoke empathy.

With each artist embodying and evoking attention as practice, this panel will discuss the capacity for artistic research to offer new discourse of/for/with the more-than-human. The session will give particular focus to esoteric forms of life, those that are often unfamiliar, undesirable, or unrelatable; such as insects, plants, or bacteria. The panel will discuss and demonstrate attention for these life forms through the following topics:

– The artist as conduit for more-than-human advocacy with resulting exhibition as provocation for audience self-awareness.

– Manifesting non-human agency to extend beyond the domination of human-centered collaboration within performative arts.

– Representation versus re-presentation in imaging the ‘lower’ animal.

– Thinking-of, thinking-for, or thinking-with the more-than-human as three distinct methods, each with specific contradictions and consequences.

This panel will be situated with emerging practice to address a mixture of studio-based and new media methodologies in artistic research regarding the more-than-human.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

4. Queer Antidotes: Specificity in Theory and Practice

Convenor(s):

Hamish McIntosh, University of Melbourne, Dr Zoë Bastin, Deakin University

Speakers:

Hamish McIntosh, University of Melbourne, Dr Zoë Bastin, Deakin University, Melissa Ratliff, Monash University, Dr Frances Barrett, University of South Australia, Phillip Adams, Temperance Hall, Sang Thai, RMIT University, Eden Swan

Abstract:

How dangerous is queer specificity? Much has been said recently of queerness’ popularity and seemingly endless application. With the increasing commercialisation and tacit visibility of LGBTQIA+ cultures in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, queerness is spreading. However, critiques from scholars and artists of colour have challenged the colonial logic of this ubiquity for decades. Reflecting on these critiques, we present papers and performances on specificity: on queer antidotes to supposedly “queer” universality and inclusion. The title of this panel is inspired by the Greek word “antidotos,” meaning “given against.” Acknowledging that Western Art Theory has invoked queerness in reaction to normativity and power, this panel explores the particular problems and contexts that queerness might address. We ask, what are we giving queer against, and how might this reflect the excluded lives, embodiments and practices that inspired theory? To explore these questions, we highlight specific modes of theorising and practising: resistance through curatorial uncertainty, subtle t-shirt significations, silly-in-pink choreographies, and Brechtian BioDrag polemics. Convened by dancers, this panel includes contributions from multiple artistic traditions—curation, fashion, visual art, and performance—with each paper and performance demonstrating queer antidotes by showing up and showing how.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

5. Neoliberalism and the Visual: Notes on a Politics of Refusal (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Chari Larsson, Griffith University

Speakers:

Grace Slonim, Monash University, Dr Alexsandr Wansbrough, University of Sydney

Abstract:

In the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008, increasing scholarly attention is now being paid to neoliberalism’s social and ideological agendas. If neoliberalism is understood in its narrowest sense, as a set of economic policies, we risk neglecting the extent that it has fostered new forms of social relations and subjectivities. With its emphasis on productivity and enterprise, what are neoliberalism’s invisibilising tendencies? What other forms of subjectivities are ignored or forgotten because they are not valued or promoted?

In line with the conference theme of ‘demonstration’, the aim of this panel is to investigate neoliberalism’s engagement with the visual, broadly imagined. What opportunities exist for visual arts practitioners for critique and disruption of neoliberalism’s normative frameworks?

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

6. Embodied material transformations (1)

Convenor(s):

Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University

Speakers:

Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University, Cara Johnson, RMIT University, Inari Kiuru, Claire McArdle, RMIT University, Kelly McDonald, Victoria McIntosh, Neke Moa, Lisa Waup, Associate Professor Linda Knight, RMIT University, Madaleine Trigg, Massey University

Abstract:

This dual-session panel explores how contemporary acts of making and material transformations in Aotearoa and Australia can embody kinship, and/or critical enquiry in craft/object-based practices. Inviting makers, curators and writers to reflect on current practices situated across jewellery, textiles, object making where hand-crafting is a means of embodied exploration and knowledge sharing. Processes involving conscious cultivation or collection of materials are especially welcomed. The session begins with a group discussion on project-in-progress Deep Material Energy, including contributions from the eight makers (four from Aotearoa and four from Naarm), and curator and panel facilitator Heather Galbraith, plus five presentations selected from paper submissions.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

7. Museums and Risk

Convenor(s):

Associate Professor Christopher R. Marshall, University of Melbourne, Dr Georgina S. Walker, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Associate Professor Christopher R. Marshall, University of Melbourne, Dr Georgina S. Walker, University of Melbourne, Dr Anna Lawrenson, University of Sydney, Mark Friedlander, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

In March 2022, the Director of the Kharkiv Art Museum in Northeast Ukraine informed The Art Newspaper that the Museum had been able to keep its collections safe: “however the very definition of ‘safety’ today is relative”. This session invites us to consider the implications raised by the multiple risks facing museums and art galleries in an increasingly unstable world. Museum risk assessment policies tend to focus on the immediately definable dangers that are posed by such natural and socially determined threats as fires, floods, theft, vandalism, terrorist attacks, etc. Yet this session will also ask participants to consider the less tangible – but no less pressing – risks facing museums today. How, for example, can museums best present challenging ideas in a safe environment? What are the risks – as well as the benefits – involved in the increasing emphasis on private branding and other forms of individual and corporate sponsorship in museums? And what risks should museums be prepared to take as they seek to redefine themselves in the wake of the Covid pandemic and the multiple sources of social, political, natural and economic uncertainty in the 2020s. The session aims to explore these and other issues through a range of contemporary and historical case studies and in relation to both art institutions as well as other museum settings in the private as well as the public sectors.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

8. Venus in Tullamarine: Norman Lindsay Now

Convenor(s):

Cameron Hurst

Speakers:

Professor Ian McLean, University of Melbourne, Cameron Hurst, Robert Vidas, Monash University

Abstract:

Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) was a prolific, popular and controversial Australian artist. He is best known for his children’s book The Magic Pudding and his skilled prints, which mostly draw on Greek and Roman mythology and 19th century literature and philosophy. The white Australian cultural consciousness is indelibly marked by Lindsay’s output, his prominence in the Sydney bohemian intellectual scene around figures like Rose Lindsay, Ken Slessor and Francis Webb and The Magic Pudding, which entrances the imagination of generation after generation of Australian children. This consciousness is marked too by the paradoxical conjunctions of Lindsay’s life: artistic bohemia and fascistic tendencies, avant-gardism and the rule of law, libertinism and conservatism, worship and denigration.

Panellists will examine Lindsay’s current position in Australian art history, building on research conducted during Venus in Tullamarine, an exhibition of the University of Melbourne’s Norman Lindsay collection held at the George Paton Gallery in 2022.

1 Dec, 11-12.30pm

9. Other Australian Stories In Britain 1920-1960

Convenor(s):

Professor Rex Butler, Monash University, Dr ADS Donaldson, National Art School

Speakers:

Professor Rex Butler, Monash University, Dr ADS Donaldson, National Art School

Abstract:

The recent Queer exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria draws our attention to a number of gay Australian men who lived and worked in the visual arts in Britain before and after the Second World War: James Gleeson, Loudon Sainthill, Roy de Maistre, Sidney Nolan and Harry Tatlock Miller. And there were others: Rex Nan Kivell, Douglas Cooper and even in a way Francis Bacon. Bernard Smith wrote a famous polemic, ‘The Myth of Isolation’, lambasting English critics for seeing Australian art as exotic and isolated, but even he did not know or did not see fit to record the extent of English-Australian artistic connections during this period, especially featuring gay men. In this regard, it is like his writing out of the women, and especially lesbian women, who worked in Paris before and after the Second World War. What other kinds of “Australian” stories can we tell in Britain that are not the usual ones featuring the Australian writers and intellectuals of the 1960s and the straight Sidney Nolan? This session tell these other Australian (and sometimes New Zealand) stories.

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

10. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University

Speakers:

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University, Emeritus Professor Harriet Edquist, RMIT University, Anna Stewart-Yates, Associate Professor Linda Tyler, University of Auckland

Abstract:

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

11. Coaxing chaos: spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary art (1)

Convenor(s):

Professor Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland, Victoria Wynne-Jones, University of Auckland

Speakers:

Professor Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland, Victoria Wynne-Jones, University of Auckland, Dr Sanné Mestrom, University of Sydney, Mikayla Journée, University of Auckland

Abstract:

This panel seeks to explore artistic practices that co-opt spontaneity in order to coax chaos and the unpredictable into being demonstrative.

How can we evaluate the successes of planned demonstrations compared to those not planned but which are nevertheless, in retrospect, transformative and meaningful? And what can we learn from deconstructing the premeditated and intentional? Which artistic practices in history, recently and in the making, are inspired by alternatives to the notion that an author and a plan are necessary for something to be demonstrative? How can various forms of art, performance, social practice, and art as activism become the butterfly’s wing, the agent for the swarming of historically necessary transformations that dislodge social inequities and the power structures that produce them? Is there an alliance or synthesis possible between premeditated aims and spontaneous ruptures that usher in change? Resisting the didactic impulse, this panel invites us to think, examine and create unpremeditated and unprethinkable revolutions in thought, action, and being.

How might artistic practice challenge the indexicality of demonstration, particularly the pre-conceived taxonomies of museum studies and histories of art? Can artworks and/or exhibition-making manifest troubling ontologies that challenge individuation, making manifest an interplay of affect, rhythm, chaos and entropy?

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

12. Demonstrations: The Body Across Borders (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Francis Plagne, University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Francis Plagne, University of Melbourne, Geoff Hondroudakis, University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Tara McDowell, Monash University

Abstract:

The relationship between general and particular is a central problem of art history. As Baxandall and others have argued, even the apparently simple act of describing a single work can be seen as complicated by the inherently generalising nature of the language used and its indirect relationship to the object. These complications multiply when individual artworks are analysed within broad historical or theoretical frameworks, leading often to accusations that they are taken out of context, over-simplified, reduced to little more than props, and so on. In response, many writers on art have turned to intensive focus on individual works, at times stressing the experiential dimension of their own encounters with them as the site of an inexhaustible surplus of visual over verbal.

This panel reflects on these questions in relation to historical traditions of writing about art and contemporary applications. What uses have individual examples been put to in past art history? Can anything be salvaged from the ambitious ‘grand narrative’ approaches to writing these histories, now often discredited? What challenges do individual objects pose to historical and theorical paradigms? How is the dialectic between general and particular at play in artists’ identities and contemporary modes of art production?

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

13. Neoliberalism and the Visual: Notes on a Politics of Refusal (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Chari Larsson, Griffith University

Speakers:

Dr Chari Larsson, Griffith University, Dr William Allen, University of Oxford, Emeritus Professor Catherine Speck, University of Adelaide, Jude Adams, Dr Giles Fielke, Monash University

Abstract:

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

14. Embodied material transformations (2)

Convenor(s):

Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University

Speakers:

Professor Heather Galbraith, Massey University, Judith Reardon, Curtin University, Hana Pera Aoake, Gabby O’Connor, University of Auckland

Abstract:

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

15. A Politics of Obfuscation: Art, Class and the Dematerialisation of Demonstration

Convenor(s):

Elyssia Bugg, University of Melbourne, Tara Heffernan, University of Melbourne, Dr Scott Robinson, Monash University

Speakers:

Elyssia Bugg, University of Melbourne, Tara Heffernan, University of Melbourne, Dr Scott Robinson, Monash University

Abstract:

The aesthetic echo of 68 lives on in Pepsi commercials, runway shows and countless site-specific art installations featuring protest signs arranged in faux disorder in white walled galleries. Usually delivered in the seductive phraseology of art-speak, transparently self-serving talk of “micro-communities/utopias”, “awareness-raising”, “visibility” and “special knowledge” dominate much art discourse, lubricating the art market while eclipsing pragmatic discussions of material inequality. This panel will consider the co-option of “demonstration” as an amorphous and troublingly ambiguous concept central to the neoliberal politics of the post 68 art world. Presenters’ papers will address topics such as: neoliberal art and aesthetics, art strikes, elitism, global cosmopolitanism, and the status of artists, curators, academics and artworkers within the professional managerial class. The papers will situate these topics as they pertain to artists’ practice, political organising, and structures of class and power as they’re constructed in and imagined by the art world today.

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

16. Machine Metaphors in Art: Asserting Selfhood

Convenor(s):

Dr Tony Curran, University of Tasmania

Speakers:

Dr Tony Curran, University of Tasmania, Ben Rak, UNSW, Dr Chris Handran, Queensland University of Technology

Abstract:

For over a century, the machine has been an enduring metaphor for artists, philosophers, theorists, and historians commenting on the production, distribution, and consumption of art. Presenters in panel address the prevalence and impacts of machine metaphors, illuminating how such metaphors frame our thinking of artists, artworks, and arts workers, and consider what is at stake for communities when these metaphors are naturalized.

The Futurist’s dream to merge with machines still resounds in contemporary art. Andy Warhol famously wanted to “be a machine” as he and his “employees” worked away in the Factory. More recently, authorship has been attributed to algorithms as co-authors (vis-a-vis Harold Cohen and AI robot AARON) and as sole-authors in the 2018 Christies’ auction of The Portrait of Edmond Belamy (2018) by French collective Obvious. Levi-Bryant’s Machine-Oriented Aesthetics (2011) proposed that artworks are engines that produce, anticipating Olafur Eliasson’s Reality Machines (2015), an exhibition title which positioned the artworks as reality-producing machines. Increasingly, the machine’s elevated position of value has become palpable in the representation of the artworld machine through the launch of Merek Classens AI and data driven art market App Limna, which calculates artists’ value in the attention economy. Is the machine now the measure of art?

This panel will be split across two sections, which divides the discussion between two foci – on creative agencies and asserting selfhood.

1 Dec, 1.30-3pm

17. Bernard Smith’s European Vision and the South Pacific

Convenor(s):

Dr Sheridan Palmer, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Professor Rex Butler, Monash University, Dr Sheridan Palmer, University of Melbourne, Professor Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland, Professor Laurence Simmons, University of Auckland, Valerie Sparks, Dr Harriet Parsons, Dr Chris Bond

Abstract:

Bernard Smith (1916–2011) was arguably Australia’s greatest art historian and one of the most important humanist thinkers internationally on ideas concerning cultural contact. His European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, was a pioneering document of deep and interdisciplinary research: a meditation on art, literature, science, the politics of colonisation and cultural exchange. It shows how the ideas of the Enlightenment and the empirical structuring of scientific and geographical knowledge during the great eighteenth-century voyages of discovery affected notions of identity—both for Europeans and the Indigenous peoples with whom they came in contact. Not only did Smith’s investigation into imperialism of this period explore the conditions of frontier contact it opened the dialogue on cross-cultural perceptions and decolonisation, allowing us ‘to think beyond or after it’. For this, Smith’s book remains a beacon in pacific studies and postcolonialism.

The republication of European Vision and the South Pacific is an essential part of the discourse reframing the interconnections and crossing of cultural boundaries between Europe and antipodean societies. This third edition of a significant Australian classic, complements scholarship on territorialisation, colonialism and the politics of exchange between metropolitan centres and peripheries, and a new introduction by Sheridan Palmer and Greg Lehman situates the book in a contemporary context.

This special panel session, chaired by Rex Butler, will discuss the importance of this major classic.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

18. Excavating Women’s histories: nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries (3)

Convenor(s):

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University

Speakers:

Dr Sarah Scott, The Australian National University, Dr Christina Clarke, The Australian National University, Melinda Mockridge, Lauriston Heritage; Duldig Studio, Elspeth Pitt, National Gallery of Australia, Lauren Gutsell, Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Abstract:

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

19. Coaxing chaos: spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary art (2)

Convenor(s):

Professor Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland, Victoria Wynne-Jones, University of Auckland

Speakers:

Professor Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland, Victoria Wynne-Jones, University of Auckland, Amanda Watson, Waikato Institute of Technology, Dr Daniel Connell

Abstract:

This panel seeks to explore artistic practices that co-opt spontaneity in order to coax chaos and the unpredictable into being demonstrative.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

20. Demonstrations: The Body Across Borders

Convenor(s):

Dr Mimi Kelly, University of Sydney, Dr Victoria Souliman, University of Sydney

Speakers:

Dr Mimi Kelly, University of Sydney, Dr Victoria Souliman, University of Sydney, Chenlei Xiao, University of Sydney, Beth Kearney, University of New England

Abstract:

In recent visual cultural practice, representation of selfhood has often been one of self-reflexive transformation that responds to changing conditions of geographic place and personal space. This includes migration, displacement, colonial legacies, diaspora, the transitory and more recently, the digital realm. The constructions of identities that respond to shifting borders or the liminality of the digital realm, often have the potential to reject fixed notions of self notably relating to bodily ‘ideals’, gender, sexuality, culture and race. In this context, the formation of identity and aesthetics are imprinted by the potential of reinvention and reconfiguration. This includes the ability to complicate conventionally proscribed or limiting concepts related particularly to the gendered subject. This panel explores how selfhood, mediated through the influence of displacement, translocation, or the transcendence of national borders, can become a site of confrontation, resistance, liberation and more broadly, identity construction.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

21. [No panel scheduled]

Convenor(s):

Speakers:

Abstract:

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

22. Art and Design in the Transition to a Low-Carbon Future

Convenor(s):

Dr Geoff Isaac

Speakers:

Dr Geoff Isaac, Dr Michael Dickinson, University of Newcastle, Nahum McLean, University of Technology Sydney

Abstract:

This session examines the role of art and design in forming visions and guidelines for the transition to a low-carbon future. The role of creativity in guiding the direction of change and mapping a path toward a more sustainable future is widely acknowledged in transition management literature. Visionary paths toward plausible future alternatives provoke debate and provide guidance on system innovations, highlighting the technical, institutional, and behavioural problems that need resolving.

Graphic designers and product designers are inundated with manifestos, check lists, and tools to improve the sustainability credentials of their work. Artists and museum professionals too are under increasing pressure to consider the carbon impacts of their practice. Establishing protocols for instrumental change towards lower carbon emissions is essential for human industry, the world of art and design plays a powerful role demonstrating utopian and dystopian visions to guide that process.

This session asks us to rethink and reimagine what a low-carbon future looks like and how we can get there.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

23. Avant-Garde Demonstrations: Radical Exhibition Culture from Fringe Experimentation to State Propaganda

Convenor(s):

Christian Rizzalli, University of Queensland, Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Christian Rizzalli, University of Queensland, Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne, Emeritus Professor Andrew McNamara, Queensland University of Technology, Jessica Spresser, University of Queensland

Abstract:

The first half of the 20th century saw radical transformations in exhibition culture. While Greenbergian theories of modernism propose that the period followed a steady march towards the White Cube, various groups — particularly amongst the European avant-garde — took an approach entirely at odds with this narrative. Futurists, Dadaists, Constructivists and Rationalists (to name a few) reimagined the exhibition space, treating it not as a space of contemplation for the display of precious art objects, but rather as a dynamic and vital space for the demonstration of new political and cultural possibilities. In practice, this extended from fringe experimentation (the anarchic First International Dada Fair of 1920) to fully-fledged state propaganda (El Lissitzky’s Soviet Pavilion at the Pressa exhibition of 1928). A far cry from the purity of the White Cube, the avant-garde exhibitions of this period were often chaotic and overfilled with material, and many aimed to viscerally impact their viewers in one way or another.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

24. Machine Metaphors in Art: Creative Agencies

Convenor(s):

Dr Tony Curran, University of Tasmania

Speakers:

Dr Tony Curran, University of Tasmania, Veronika Sinyanskaya, University of Melbourne, Kieran Browne, Karen Ann Donnachie, Andy Simionato

Abstract:

This panel will be split across two sections, which divides the discussion between two foci – on creative agencies and asserting selfhood.

1 Dec, 3.30-5pm

25. Agency, Country and Place: encounters with photography

Convenor(s):

Dr Peta Clancy, Monash University, Jahkarli Romanis, Monash University

Speakers:

Dr Peta Clancy, Monash University, Jahkarli Romanis, Monash University, Dr Jessica Neath, Monash University, Dr Kirsten Lyttle, Monash University, Professor Melissa Miles, Monash University

Abstract:

“For Aboriginal people, Place is epistemologically and ontologically central to notions of action or intent. Not only history but meaning arises out of Place, whether Place is geographically located or an event in time.” Mary Graham 2009

There is a problematic history of photography in Australia, in framing landscape as an object to capture or obtain. This is an extractive logic that seeks to know a landscape, abstract its identity as place, ignorant to the knowledge of Country. Yet, there are other ways of knowing through photography, of a medium of light that speaks with Country to share, or protect, stories and knowledge.

We are a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and researchers who share an interest in photography, in the ontological dilemmas that photographs of Country/landscape/place can raise, and in the stories and knowledge that are revealed in these encounters.

How can we think through these terms of Country, place and landscape by looking at photography and letting photographs have agency and speak on their own terms?

A panel presentation will take the form of a roundtable discussion between five artists and researchers: Peta Clancy (Bangerang), Jahkarli Romanis (Pitta Pitta), Dr Kirsten Lyttle (Iwi/tribe: Waikato, Waka/Canoe: Tainui, Hapū/Subtribe: Ngāti Tahinga), Prof Melissa Miles and Dr Jessica Neath. Each speaker will present one photograph of Country/landscape/place outlining what interests them about the photograph they have chosen and why they selected it. Through this the speaker will elaborate on the different knowledge/s and research that they bring to the discussion. Prompting further discussion from another speaker who will respond to the photograph from their perspective. The idea is for the photographs to assume their own presence in a roundtable format.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

26. Misdirected Unrealism

Convenor(s):

Jen Valender

Speakers:

Jen Valender, Scotty So, James Little

Abstract:

What happens when an artist performs a misdirected truth? How might the public respond to layers of deception in public artworks?

This panel will dig into processes of showcasing artworks as demonstrations within visual culture and arts research. Positioned between critique and parody, Jen Valender, Scotty So and James Little will discuss their use of misdirected unrealism in their art practices. This panel will traverse approaches to virtual performance as artistic resistance: from rewriting history by editing an archive to utilising Zoom for conversational parody and appropriating gallery Instagram feeds. Participants will discuss research into psychological and ethical binds, toxic art world dynamics, the politics of censorship, and making artworks that sit between physical and simulated reality.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

27. Art History – Old Tropes, New Criticality

Convenor(s):

Dr Nerina Dunt, Adelaide Central School of Art, Sasha Grbich, Adelaide Central School of Art; Flinders University

Speakers:

Dr Nerina Dunt, Adelaide Central School of Art, Sasha Grbich, Adelaide Central School of Art; Flinders University, Dr Louisa Bufardeci, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

As knowledge continues to be mobilised through decolonising processes and diverse methodologies for enquiry, art history is increasingly prone to renewed criticality that disables its dominant narratives. Consequently, there are opportunities to engage learner practitioners of contemporary art in reconsidering art histories. Through innovative encounters in the art history classroom with the past, emerging artists are equipped for activism as they shape an alternative present and imagine novel futures.

This panel addresses how pedagogies may activate students to enquire into potential and alternatives histories and bodies of knowledge through their art practice. How might teaching art history reframe old disciplinary tropes to embed criticality within foundation contemporary art studies?

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

28. Demonstrations of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Michelle Antoinette, Monash University

Speakers:

Dr Michelle Antoinette, Monash University, Dr Luise Guest, Huixian Dong, Arizona State University, Louise Anne M. Salas, University of Auckland

Abstract:

This panel invites papers on the 2022 AAANZ conference theme of ‘Demonstration’ with a broad interest in modern and contemporary Asian art and its contexts. This includes demonstrations of Asian art through art practice itself, exhibition-making and other kinds of curatorial practice, as well as art history. These demonstrations may be wide ranging in their intent, for instance: politically-motivated art demonstrations to engender change, protest, and propose alternative realities in Asia; educative or pedagogic demonstrations that literally show, teach or explain through art; and the development of modern and contemporary Asian art histories or exhibitions as forms of demonstration, to evidence or reveal the existence of art practices in the past or the present. Asian contexts are broadly defined and may include a consideration of demonstrations of Asian art outside Asia, including in Australia.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

29. Walking as Demonstration

Convenor(s):

Dr Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Royal College of Art, Simon King, University of London, Dr Jacqueline Felstead, University of Melbourne, Carola Ureta Marin, Royal College of Art

Speakers:

Dr Jaspar Joseph-Lester, Royal College of Art, Simon King, University of London, Dr Jacqueline Felstead, University of Melbourne, Carola Ureta Marin, Royal College of Art

Abstract:

This panel uses the example of the Walkative Project at the Royal College of Art to talk about the relationship between walking and ‘demonstration’. Founded by Jaspar Joseph-Lester and Simon King in 2013, Walkative’s propositional starting point is that the city contains narratives, knowledge and contested materialities best accessed through walking. Through participant and guest-led walks, written and visual documentation, the Walkative Project uses walking to trigger processes of thinking, researching, collaborating and making. As the world went into lockdown due to COVID-19, Walkative continued as a series of international city walks in a virtual sphere. Meeting online allowed for a connection in the here and now that was conducive to a dialogic exchange of experiences, attitudes and preoccupations. The differences in location and time zones between presenter-walkers, panellists and audience reinforced not only a sense of our temporal and spatial dislocation but also a shared commonality. In each city the pandemic had changed the way artists engage with public space and this new relationship with the city impacted on their practice, at the same time this project generated a new virtual community around their concerns. Through the example of the Walkative Project during lockdown this panel considers walking as a means of knowledge production, community building and demonstration.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChp00VbIiwCv3IiA6BkXmCw

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

30. Making spells to break the spell

Convenor(s):

Dr Tessa Laird, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Tessa Laird, University of Melbourne, Dr Anastasia Murney, UNSW, Jen Alexandra, Dr Gwynneth Porter, Tina Stefanou, University of Melbourne, Kellie Wells, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

In Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell (2011), Phillipe Pignarre and Isabelle Stengers define capitalism as a “system of sorcery without sorcerers”, and posit the reclamation of women’s ritual practices as compelling techniques for wresting authority from “invisible powers”. Likewise, Michael Taussig advocates for “apotropaic” artistic practices, in order to “break the catastrophic spell of things” not least the “magic of the state”. Increasingly, artists and activists are drawn to magical thinking, incantations and rituals, such as Linda Stupart’s “Spell to bind all-male conference panels” (2017), or Jeremy Deller’s Father and Son (2021), a case of sympathetic magic in which large scale wax figures of the Murdoch Empire were publicly melted, to provoke the waning of their power.

Pignarre and Stengers ask would-be witches to “share recipes” on how to protect ourselves from common enemies in the poisoned milieu we all inhabit. Similarly, this panel welcomes papers from artists, writers and researchers whose practices are engaged in the reclamation of magic arts; reviving and protecting sleeping knowledges; and fabulating tactics for earthly flourishing.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

31. The Past is Another Country: 50 years after the Whitlam Cultural Revolution

Convenor(s):

Wendy Garden, AAANZ

Speakers:

Wendy Garden, AAANZ, Dr Ben Eltham, Monash University, Dr Joanna Mendelssohn, University of Melbourne, Professor Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh

Abstract:

2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the election of the Whitlam Labor Government on 2 December 1972. The first time the Australian Labor Party had been in government in 23 years, it enacted wide-sweeping reforms including abolishing university fees to provide free tertiary education. Amongst an unprecedented number of legislative reforms, it was Whitlam’s support for arts and culture that most indelibly altered Australia’s cultural identity. Stating ‘of all the objectives of my Government none have a higher priority than the encouragement of the arts, the preservation and enrichment of our cultural and intellectual heritage,’ Whitlam substantially increased the arts budget, developed a national arts and culture policy, set up the Australia Council for the Arts (ensuring artists had a role in its decision making processes) and established the Art Acquisition Committee for the nascent National Gallery. Whitlam supported the purchase of Jackson Pollock’s painting Blue Poles for a record $1.1 million creating a national conversation about the role of contemporary art. At a time when the film industry was dormant, he set up the Australian Film Commission creating a renaissance in local film production and he reformed Australian radio, establishing Double J. His leadership gave rise to increased arts investment by local governments and state bodies resulting in the establishment of a number of new galleries and arts organisations in metropolitan and regional communities around the country. Our thriving arts and cultural sector today is a direct product of his ground-breaking reforms.

This session will reflect upon the impact of the Whitlam Government’s arts policy, the legacy of the Whitlam reforms and their influence on the arts landscape today.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

32. Sculpture Exhibitions as Demonstrations of Revisionist Histories

Convenor(s):

Dr Jane Eckett, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Lesley Harding, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Dr Bronwyn Hughes, University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Alison Inglis, University of Melbourne, Dr Jane Eckett, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

Curators of historical exhibitions rarely set out to present ‘the already known’, instead revisiting works from the past to propose new interpretations. Paradigmatic shifts, changes of perspective, engagement with historically underrepresented groups of artists, reassessments of individual artists, and recently re-discovered artworks all help transform existing art historical narratives. In this sense, historical exhibitions effectively enact or demonstrate revisionist histories. This is particularly relevant in the case of sculpture, where exhibitions offer a palpable three-dimensional and temporal experience that is almost impossible to convey through printed text or photographic reproduction. But can complex revisionary narratives and arguments plausibly be proposed through the exhibition format? And are such revisionist histories even necessary for audience engagement? This panel considers three recent exhibitions of twentieth-century modernist sculpture and stained glass at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Hamilton Art Gallery, and McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. All three present work more usually encountered in architectural and urban public art contexts. The curators of each exhibition reflect on the specific challenges this entails and the possibilities for revising art historical narratives through the exhibition format.

2 Dec, 10.30am-12nn

33. Adorning Indigenous bodies: Maori, Pasifika and other Indigenous perspectives

Convenor(s):

Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis, University of Auckland, Dr Patricia Te Arapo Wallace, University of Canterbury, Dr Kirsten Lyttle, Monash University

Speakers:

Associate Professor Ngarino Ellis, University of Auckland, Dr Patricia Te Arapo Wallace, University of Canterbury, Dr Kirsten Lyttle, Monash University

Abstract:

Adornment is an important global practice which enables makers and wearers to demonstrate their social, political and economic identities. These operate within complex and ever-changing landscapes. In Indigenous communities such as Maori and Pasifika, the selection of different materials and technologies create works which respond to contemporary issues and events. The practice of wearing and layering adornments themselves asserts sovereignty over the body, often disrupting narratives of gender, mana and tapu. We welcome papers that explore the dynamic of adornment, both physical forms as well as the practices which enact values and histories. Nau mai, haere mai – welcome.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

34. Medieval and Early Modern Art and Visual Culture

Convenor(s):

Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Associate Professor Anthony White, University of Melbourne, Amelia Pontifex, Monash University, Danielle Pezzi, Monash University, Dr Judith Collard, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

This session features papers about art and visual culture in the medieval and early modern periods.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

35. Why we should care: Art Writing and care ethics (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Gretchen Coombs, Associate Professor Jacqueline Millner, La Trobe University

Speakers:

Dr Gretchen Coombs, Associate Professor Jacqueline Millner, La Trobe University, Dr Ruth Skilbeck, Lisa Andrew, Museum of Contemporary Art, Dr Kate Warren, The Australian National University

Abstract:

As we endure vexing and intertwined assaults on culture, arts writing faces difficult questions about its relevance and survival. This roundtable panel considers how art writing can demonstrate an “ethics of care”[1] as a possible way forward. A focus on care ethics in contemporary art explores how creative practitioners interpret and enact new models of care. These practical solutions and models of practice offer new ways to think about contemporary art and its social function, but might also be the basis for alternative ethics and aesthetics to counter the harms of neoliberalism.

What role can art writing, in its myriad forms, play in reconfiguring how artists, communities, social issues are re-presented and understood, and therefore valued? How might we develop art writing that will breach arts’ boundaries into ethnographic, journalistic and decolonial praxis in an effort to imagine different futures? Can art writing be a form of alliance or accomplice building? What formal qualities will demonstrate these shifts at a time of social, cultural and environmental uncertainty? What kinds of changes can and should be made to our current practices and which platforms seem best equipped for the current dynamics? How do we best organize ourselves and our writing?

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

36. Demonstrations of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Michelle Antoinette, Monash University

Speakers:

Dr Michelle Antoinette, Monash University, Chloe Ho, University of Melbourne, Xin Xian Cindy Huang, Eugenia Lim, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

37. Round Table Panel: Embodied Consciousness

Convenor(s):

Jenny Hickinbotham

Speakers:

Jenny Hickinbotham, Grace McQuilten, RMIT University, Dr Ceri Hann

Abstract:

The artist speaks across practical, conceptual, and ethical issues of performative practice: sharing song and video.

Professor Antonio Damasio, Portuguese/American neuroscientist and author of Feeling and Knowing discusses the body’s thought-less primitive bacterial-like brain’s autonomic behaviours which link to elements of Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory. The paper’s author discusses fight/flight impulse through emotionally challenging ‘voice hearing’ type experiences. Emotions transmit inside the body while sensory information is gleaned through an environmental lens. Emotion and sense information meet in the brain culminating in the reasoning or logical brain’s conscious experience.

Issues considered:

– How can human senses support engagement with our environment?

– What does sense engagement mean for an ethics of participation?

– How does the artist’s singing performance impact sensory engagement and emotional engagement?

– Where can embodied engagement between, the primitive mind and fight/flight mind, create consciousness or the reasoning mind. (REF Professor Antonio Damasio).

– How can performative art embody consciousness?

– What does it feel like to communicate through performance?

– Embodied Consciousness will be considered in light of the dis-embodied online audience’s sensory, emotional and reasoning know-how. Do sensory experiences, listening and vocalising, usurp a whole of body online engagement?

Audience participation is encouraged.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

38. Tastes of Justice: the politics of food-art practices in Asia and Australia (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Marnie Badham, RMIT University, Professor Stephen Loo, UNSW, Assistant Professor Francis Maravillas, National Taipei University of Education

Speakers:

Dr Marnie Badham, RMIT University, Professor Stephen Loo, UNSW, Assistant Professor Francis Maravillas, National Taipei University of Education, Bianca Winataputri, Monash University, Rebecca Blake, The Australian National University, Joella Kiu, Singapore Art Museum

Abstract:

The diverse food-art practices in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand highlight critical issues relating to the ethics and politics of curating relational practices of commensality and hospitality (Badham & Maravillas, 2019). These performative, social, and material practices engender diverse forms of cultural expression and creatively mediate cultural relations by tapping into transnational and diasporic vectors of connection to an imagined ‘home’ (Ang et al., 2000). While artists engaging with foodways can draw our attention to pressing concerns of sovereignty, race, migration, gender, labour, and climate change – the curation and exhibition of these practices raise both practical and conceptual issues. Cooking and galleries rarely mix, foodstuffs are difficult to collect, and eating creates unpredictable experiences (Badham & Maravillas, 2022). Gallery exhibitions can remove these practices from their cultural and community contexts, uncritically staging demonstrations of food cultures as spectacle, flattening their sensory and social complexities (Badham & Maravillas, 2019), as well as overlooking non-normative affects and dissonant perceptions (Loo, 2022).

Hosted by artist-curator-researchers, Marnie Badham (RMIT University) Stephen Loo (UNSW) and Francis Maravillas (National Taipei University of Education) this double panel will explore ‘the tastes of justice’ including both performative lectures as ‘cooking demonstrations’ and critical examinations of ‘curation as demonstration’ to consider the affective, sensuous, and culturally and politically attuned potential of food-art practices. Your ‘dinner hosts’ will frame the sessions with appetisers and palate cleansers across our afternoon menu of diverse ‘tastes of justice’ served up by Bianca Winataputri, Rebecca Blake, Joella Kiu, Madaleine Trigg, and Alia Parker. Presenters and audiences online are encouraged to snack, sip and slurp their way through the afternoon of dialogue, discourse, performance and provocations together.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

39. OPEN SESSION

Convenor(s):

Dr Suzie Fraser, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Suzie Fraser, University of Melbourne, Eric Riddler, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Angela Goddard, Griffith University, Victoria Adams, University of Auckland

Abstract:

The following open session includes papers about twentieth-century art in Australia and New Zealand.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

40. “Watch me attack!”: Violence and Visual Culture in Premodern Wars

Convenor(s):

Dr Mark K Erdmann, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Mark K Erdmann, University of Melbourne, Dr John Gagné, University of Sydney, Shiqiu Liu, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

The framing of war can be as fraught as its unfolding. This panel will focus on several pre-modern East Asian and European art works that were born of and grapple with war and ultimately served to demonstrate the worth of the violence which forged them. Subjects to be considered include early 17th-century paintings of Japan’s 12th-century civil wars and the role of these images in negotiating warrior identity in peacetime; a biographical handscroll of a defected general and its unique perspective on the Mongol invasions of the 13th century; and the decorated banners around which European Renaissance soldiers rallied and died. The panelists will discuss how actions, violence, emotions and identities were manipulated through an interaction of visual and textual materials, and how soldiers and veterans found justification and closure through the creation of symbols and memorials. Moreover, the panel will seek to reconcile the notion of ‘winners writing history’ with the reality that war creates trauma for all involved. These retellings of the warriors and witnesses are not just records of historical episodes but also provide precious lessons on the ‘eternal recurrence’ of war in human history.

2 Dec, 1.30-3pm

41.

Convenor(s):

Speakers:

Abstract:

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

42. Tasteful Exhibitionism – Early Modern Collecting, Commissioning and Display

Convenor(s):

Dr Matthew Martin, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Matthew Martin, University of Melbourne, Dr Louise Voll Box, University of Melbourne, Maria Karageorge, University of Sydney, Samantha Happé, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

In response to the sustained scholarly focus on the material aspects of eighteenth-century culture, this panel presents papers that address the idea of demonstrations of power, taste, sociability, luxury, or knowledge articulated through eighteenth-century material culture – or the instability of the material realm in this era. The panel addresses collecting, commissioning and display practices in the long eighteenth century. The panel will consider technical innovations in the production of luxury goods; collections and their display as tools for asserting or advancing political and social authority; the establishment of State manufactories for luxury goods and the changing labour market; cosmopolitanism and its impact on regional styles.

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

43. Why we should care: Art Writing and care ethics (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Gretchen Coombs, Associate Professor Jacqueline Millner, La Trobe University

Speakers:

Dr Gretchen Coombs, Associate Professor Jacqueline Millner, La Trobe University, Dr Daniel Connell, Clare Fuery-Jones, University of Melbourne, Crisia Constantine, Queensland College of Art

Abstract:

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

44. Solidarity as Method: Hong Kong visual culture and its diaspora

Convenor(s):

Nikki Hiu Tung Lam, RMIT University

Speakers:

Kelly Chan, Monash University, Dr Louisa Lim, University of Melbourne, Nikki Hiu Tung Lam, RMIT University

Abstract:

This panel investigates the multiplicity of Hong Kong’s evolving visual culture during the city’s transformative years since the 2014 Umbrella Movement—one of the first large-scale social movements since the 1997 Handover. While Hong Kong cultural theorist Akbar Abbas describes Hong Kong as a ‘culture of disappearance’ (Abbas 1997), this panel argues that the city’s post-colonial social movements have led to a re-emergence of Hong Kong culture through activism, cinema and public art. With waves of emigration and ongoing socio-political shifts within the city, it has become a pivotal point for Hong Kongers as they collectively re-shape their identity through solidarity from afar and within.

This panel brings together distinctive research from three Melbourne-based Hong Kong researchers: Nikki Lam (RMIT, Artist-curator), Kelly Chan (RMIT, Visual ethnographer) and Louisa Lim (University of Melbourne, Journalist and academic), each presenting new methods of investigating Hong Kong visual culture and perspectives on Hong Kong collectivity around the world. From Hong Kong artist-activists and diaspora contemporary art, the panel will discuss how artists have responded to the ripples of socio-political change in the last decade. Together they will explore the unique historical and cultural propositions of Hong Kong through its political struggles and the emergence of a new Hong Kong subjectivity via dispersed publics.

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

45. Recentring: Towards a More Diverse Ecology of Contemporary Art

Convenor(s):

Tristen Harwood, RMIT University, Grace McQuilten, RMIT University

Speakers:

Safdar Ahmed, Tristen Harwood, RMIT University, Dr Brian McKinnon, RMIT University, Grace McQuilten, RMIT University, Nur Shkembi, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

The panel will explore a new methodology for art history, developed through a collaborative research project and book Recentring art: Towards a more complex ecology for art history. The project, and book, weave together a rich and complex ecology of contemporary art that recognises the important contributions of artists with exceptional lived experiences. It does so through a process of co-creation with artists and writers. This includes artists with disability and neurodiversity, diverse mental health, incarceration, and artists from refugee, migrant and Muslim backgrounds. At the heart of this book is the understanding that the ecology of contemporary art in the nation state known as ‘Australia’ – which we problematise further in this panel discussion – is much more inventive, multifaceted and substantial than prevailing narratives would have us believe. The reasons dominant art histories and museum and gallery practices have limited understandings of contemporary art include: the ongoing legacies of colonial structures, increasing levels of social and economic disparity and significant barriers to access for education, employment and social capital for minority communities.

The panel will be convened by two of the researchers and co-editors, Tristen Harwood and Grace McQuilten in discussion with co-authors Safdar Ahmed, Brian McKinnon and Nur Schkembi.

The panel will allow us to share our methodology of collaboration and co-creation, which breaks new ground, introducing art historians and artists to an attentive, collaboratively reconsidered picture of contemporary art.

Panel format: Each participant will discuss their contribution to the book (approximately 10 minutes each) followed by discussion about art history methods and collaboration/co-authorship between the panel members.

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

46. Tastes of Justice: the politics of food-art practices in Asia and Australia (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Marnie Badham, RMIT University, Assistant Professor Francis Maravillas, National Taipei University of Education

Speakers:

Dr Marnie Badham, RMIT University, Professor Stephen Loo, UNSW, Assistant Professor Francis Maravillas, National Taipei University of Education, Madaleine Trigg, Massey University, Alia Parker, UNSW

Abstract:

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

47. Demonstrating limits and possibilities through conceptual practices

Convenor(s):

James Gatt

Speakers:

James Gatt, Dr Elizabeth Pulie, Dr Mark Titmarsh, University of Technology Sydney, Amelia Winata, University of Melbourne

Abstract:

In response to the idea of ‘demonstrations’, this panel will address how conceptual art continues to demonstrate problems for art and its institutions. Artists Dr Elizabeth Pulie and Dr Mark Titmarsh, and writer and curator Amelia Winata, will deliver papers in response to this question with the aim of bringing historical, curatorial and artistic perspectives to the panel. The panel will address the ways in which conceptual art has presented problems for defining, exhibiting and collecting art by surveying unorthodox strategies of artists and curators in the production of art and exhibitions. For the purposes of the panel, conceptual art will be considered transhistorically, reaching backwards in time as far as Duchamp and extending to the postconceptual period of contemporary art. The problems raised by conceptual art highlight social, political and ontological boundaries for practices of art broadly. Thus conceptual art continues to demonstrate the limits of and for art while simultaneously working to breach them.

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

48. Brunelleschi’s Demonstration of Space

Convenor(s):

Dr Gail Hastings

Speakers:

Dr Gail Hastings, Zoe Marni Robertson, University of Sydney

Abstract:

In Florence in the early fifteenth century, Filippo Brunelleschi demonstrated single-point perspective with a picture panel and mirror while he stood in the central portal of Santa Maria del Fiore. Painters adopted the demonstration’s technical ramifications, and the Church celebrated their more life-like paintings. Yet the demonstration’s philosophical and scientific ramifications promulgated by Nicholas of Cusa led Giordano Bruno to be burned at the stake. It presented questions on the nature of space that contradicted an Aristotelian Universe with anisotropic matter-filled places, not isotropic space. Much, nevertheless, remains contested. Not only Brunelleschi’s method but also perspective’s replacement of a theocentric viewpoint with a subjective or anthropocentric point of view in today’s ‘posthuman’ world.

The panel will explore the history of perspective and the ensuing nature of space in contemporary art.

This includes, for instance, its first art historical treatment by Erwin Panofsky in his essay ‘Perspective as Symbolic Form’. Here, perspective’s ‘reality’ accords with a Kantian dichotomy in which space is an empty ‘form’ of thought separate from any content of the world outside. Yet, in 1960s New York, artists contested ‘a priori space’ with the art of the real. Were they unrealistic to do so?

2 Dec, 3.30-5pm

49. NFTs production, distribution, recognition, ownership, and collection

Convenor(s):

Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury, Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury

Speakers:

Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury, Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury, Nina Dyer, Depot Artspace, Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi, Elizabeth Harris, Leiden University

Abstract:

This panel invites short paper presentations as the springboard for a roundtable-like discussion focused on how NFTs provoke changes in existing production, distribution, recognition, ownership, and collection—and what this means for artists, curators, researchers, and for institutions with material collections. The panel topic responds to the exhibition Presentation Layer: NFT forms, platforms, and transference, at the University of Canterbury Ilam Campus Gallery in May 2022, and the subsequent publication launched later in 2022. This show brought together works by three established artists working with NFT forms, platforms and modes of transference, and work by two current Ilam School of Fine Arts students who are new to the medium. The premise for the show developed from an earlier roundtable discussion in April 2022, which introduced multiple histories of the NFT—artistic, economic, technical—and asked how our understanding of these histories might shape future behaviours within art practices and markets.

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

50. Prints and Printmaking: Past, Present, and Future (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Louise Voll Box, University of Melbourne, Kerianne Stone, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Louise Voll Box, University of Melbourne, Kerianne Stone, University of Melbourne, Deirdre Cannon, National Gallery of Australia, John Landt, The Australian National University, Alice Clanachan, Flinders University, Damon Kowarsky

Abstract:

The creation of images through a transfer process — woodcuts, etchings, engravings, screenprints, lithographs etc — has been central to art practice and scholarship over time. Study of the history of printmaking encompasses technical and aesthetic innovation, commercial imperatives, collaborative art making, patronage, and collecting. Prints exemplify the power of images to inspire, influence, and shape ideas.

The two sessions for this panel bring together scholars, curators, and a printmaker who explore the multi-faceted world of prints — historical and contemporary — and demonstrate prints’ important role in art making, exhibition development, and art historical scholarship in Australia and abroad. Prints and printmaking continue to challenge, illuminate, and delight.

This panel celebrates the demonstration of philanthropy by historian, curator, and collector, Dr Colin Holden (1951-2016), whose legacy supports scholarship, publishing, and exhibitions connected with prints and printmaking through the Colin Holden Charitable Trust. Dr Holden’s significant and wide-ranging print collection, now housed at Geelong Gallery, includes important French portrait prints (1640-1770); prints after Rubens and Van Dyck; depictions of cities and architecture; social realist prints (1940s-1960s); and prints by post-WWII émigrés and contemporary Australian printmakers that reinterpret European historical themes or consider social justice issues.

This panel is sponsored by Geelong Gallery in partnership with the Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

51. Collaboration and art history (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne, Dr Ursula K. Frederick, University of Canberra

Speakers:

Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne, Dr Ursula K. Frederick, University of Canberra, Mikala Dwyer, RMIT University, Liss Fenwick, RMIT University, Rebecca Ray, National Portrait Gallery, Penny Grist, National Portrait Gallery, Dr Chiara O’Reilly, University of Sydney

Abstract:

Much has been written about artistic collaboration, but what of collaboration and art history? This panel focuses on demonstrations of collaboration within the discipline of art history, between artists and institutions, and with communities and academics across disciplines. It seeks to showcase examples of collaboration that cross cultures and interdisciplinary alliances that demonstrate innovation, develop new methods and link differing knowledge and value systems. This panel also includes presentations in the form of conversations between artists and historians, case studies of curatorial collectives, and papers that outline circumstances of a breakdown in an existing collaboration or an absence of a collaboration where there should have been one.

Aiming to highlight the range and diversity of collaborative endeavours, alongside a focus on what makes collaboration successful, the presentations in this panel show research outputs that benefit their source communities. The key questions proposed by this panel are: what is ‘collaboration’? How do we/should we/can we ‘collaborate’? How do we understand the nature of collaboration? How might we collaborate better in the future?

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

52. Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda

Convenor(s):
Ane Tonga, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Speakers:

Ane Tonga, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Dr Caroline Vercoe, University of Auckland, Matariki Williams, Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Culture Manatū Taonga, Dr Emalani Case

Abstract:

We must look at the destruction of patriarchy in terms of all the other institutions it has created and props up. Therefore our attacks as feminists must be diverse – we must attack sexism and racism and capitalism and all that is created by them.
– Ripeka Evans, 1979.

The recent exhibition and publication Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki puts a stake in the ground to claim a feminist future for the Pacific.

Declaration reignites a call to action set in the late 1970s when Māori and Pacific women advocated for full and equal participation within feminist movements of the time, and more widely, in Aotearoa New Zealand society. Taking this critical moment as a point of departure acts as a reminder that the agenda has already been set and encourages us to be alert to the struggles for gender, race, power and sexuality equality that persist today.

This panel amplifies the talanoa of Declaration and will include presentations from selected contributing authors Dr Caroline Vercoe, Matariki Williams and Dr Emalani Case who will expand on their declaration of a Pacific feminist agenda.

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

53. Soft Actions (1)

Convenor(s):

Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong

Speakers:

Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong, Emeritus Professor Diana Wood Conroy, University of Wollongong, Francisco Guevara, Ju Bavyka, Connie Anthes

Abstract:

Historically, craft as often been positioned as ‘other’ to art. In Modernist thought, craft practices, such as textiles, were framed as too conservative, uncritical and embedded in daily life to be the ‘stuff’ of visual arts. In recent years, there has been a revaluing of craft practices. The processes and materials associated with craft have been employed by artists and designers as critical sites for discussion, advocacy, activism and protest. These actions are wide-ranging: from collective making spaces, to projects that seek to open conversations and debates, to artworks that employ craft to interrogate intersecting or overlooked histories, to craft-as-protest. In these creative strategies, the familiarity, the ‘softness’, and embodied knowledges of the craft processes are powerful devices that are drawn on and utilised by creative practitioners.

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

54. Children’s Museum Education: Transformation and Innovation through Creative Practice and Collaboration

Convenor(s):

Chang(Carol) Xu, Massey University

Speakers:

Chang(Carol) Xu, Massey University, Sarah Fang-Ning Lin, National Gallery of Victoria, Amy Duncan, National Gallery of Victoria, Gabby O’Connor, University of Auckland

Abstract:

Many scholars have challenged formulaic teaching procedures in museum education that impact students’ creative practices (Black, 2012; Castle, 2006; Griffin, 2007; Robins, 2016; Thomson, Hall, & Hamilton, 2019). And children are viewed as passive receivers of knowledge or “little learners” (Kirk & Buckingham, 2018) rather than co-creators and active participants or even contributors. With museums worldwide looking to engage students and expand their offerings, it is essential for museums and galleries to reflect their teaching practices and methods. This session examines the creation and development of new directions and possibilities to better understand children’s experiences in museums and galleries and the collaboration across different roles and disciplinaries outside the classroom to co-develop substantive and non-hierarchical museum practices. We welcome papers that address the following topics: new forms of children-centred praxis in museums; the possibilities and challenges of developing featured museum learning programmes and museum-based curricula; collaborative and interdisciplinary projects and approaches to children’s museum education; the role of the digital in developing collaboration across countries to co-design museum learning programmes and promote educational resource sharing; and the existing examples and future possibilities of engaging specially-abled children in museum learning activities.

3 Dec, 10-11.30am

55. Referendum (Machinery Provisions) (Third Iteration)

Convenor(s):

Natalie Lynch

Speakers:

Natalie Lynch

Abstract:

The Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 (Cth) (the Act) provides a protected architectural program for referendum, that is, the scope of design for a single communication function. Section 3 Interpretation defines referendum as ‘the submission to the electors of a proposed law for the alteration of the Constitution.’ Referendum machinery provisions constitute the architectural program for the submission process, with the polling booth as the direct, yet private, democratic interface of each elector with every elector of every State and national Crown polity. Referendum machinery provisions constitute a shared constitutional identity.

Part III—Voting at a referendum provides for the design of s 19 Ballot-boxes, s 20 Separate voting compartments, s 29 Voting, s 35 Vote to be marked in private, s 24 Manner of voting, s 25 Forms of the ballot paper and Part IX—Authorisation of referendum matter protecting the voter’s ability to communicate with each other on referendum matters. Referendum machinery provisions are iterative, with amendments to place, mobility, manner and forms of voting responsive to polities to enhance participation.

Referendum is an iterative collaborative process of constitutionalism. How might the iterative process of art and design engage with the architectural program of the Act to communicate on personal referendum matters about the affective influence of referendum machinery provisions? This Panel demonstrates the assemblage of an interpretive model of referendum machinery provisions to communicate these matters with the viewer.

3 Dec, 1-2.30pm

56. Prints and Printmaking: Past, Present, and Future (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Louise Voll Box, University of Melbourne, Kerianne Stone, University of Melbourne

Speakers:

Dr Louise Voll Box, University of Melbourne, Kerianne Stone, University of Melbourne, Emeritus Professor Richard Read, University of Western Australia, Eliza Coyle, University of Melbourne, Lisa Sullivan, Geelong Gallery

Abstract:

This panel is sponsored by Geelong Gallery in partnership with the Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

3 Dec, 1-2.30pm

57. Collaboration and art history (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne, Dr Ursula K. Frederick, University of Canberra

Speakers:

Dr Susan Lowish, University of Melbourne, Dr Ursula K. Frederick, University of Canberra, Dr Nikita Vanderbyl, La Trobe University, Alec O’Halloran, Professor Annie Clarke, University of Sydney, Professor Jennifer Barrett, University of Sydney, Dr Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University, Anindilyakwa Land Council

Abstract:

3 Dec, 1-2.30pm

58. Feminist creative practice research: methods, motives and meaning

Convenor(s):

Dr Courtney Pedersen, Queensland University of Technology, Dr Rachael Haynes, Queensland University of Technology

Speakers:

Dr Courtney Pedersen, Queensland University of Technology, Dr Rachael Haynes, Queensland University of Technology, Dr Naomi Blacklock, Queensland University of Technology, Zoe Freney, Adelaide Central School of Art; Australian National University, Dr Karike Ashworth, Queensland University of Technology

Abstract:

Creative practice-led and feminist research methods demonstrate many shared ethical and practical goals, including developing unique or distinctive outcomes, the pursuit of affective resonance, and valuing diverse perspectives in research. Feminist research asks crucial questions about what constitutes knowledge, how it is obtained, and for what purposes. There are evident synergies between this feminist questioning and the goal of creative practice research to prompt, reveal and communicate new ways of knowing that cannot be adequately discovered or demonstrated via traditional academic methods. This may explain why these two approaches have been increasingly melded over the past twenty years. The history of creative research is also a history of women’s and/or feminist contributions to methodological debates. This panel provides an opportunity to assess the mutual impact of these methods.

3 Dec, 1-2.30pm

59. Soft Actions (2)

Convenor(s):

Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong

Speakers:

Dr Boni Cairncross, University of Wollongong, Dr Deborah Eddy, Samantha Lang, University of Wollongong, Dr Linda Erceg, University of Tasmania

Abstract:

3 Dec, 1-2.30pm

60. Swap-Meet of Hope

Convenor(s):

Chris Berthelsen, University of Auckland, Rumen Rachev, Auckland University of Technology

Speakers:

Chris Berthelsen, University of Auckland, Rumen Rachev, Auckland University of Technology

Abstract:

“disappointment is the engine of hope” (Miyazaki, 2004:70, discussing Ernst Bloch)

This panel understands (through Genda Yuji and Miyazaki Hirokazu) the practice of hope as a matter of hanging-with failure, wasted-time, play, and telling ourselves stories which are neither true nor false in order to keep on going. This is no easy feat!

Professional life demands the constant demonstration of competency. To deliberately demonstrate weakness, waste, and ineptitude is usually, despite the mantra of “fail fast, fail often”, the route to termination of employment or candidature, another rejected funding proposal, or an indication that “professional development” is required.

Inspired by the “Hallucination and Delusion Competition” developed at Urakawa Bethel House (a mental health clinic in Hokkaido, Japan), participants will present and celebrate their failures, wastes of time, and delusional stories, and then swap with others. Demonstrations can take many forms… whatever suits you. We welcome any conference attendee to join this alternative-style panel. Through demonstration and exchange this panel offers a place to turn weakness into collective hope, at least for a moment, and to create new openings for bringing the practice of hope into everyday life, together. Bring your best failure forward!

1 Dec, 12.30-1.30pm