After the many ends of art history, we begin again. The conjunction of the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art’s 8th Asia-Pacific Triennial (APT 8) and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand annual conference presents opportunities to re-examine art history and generate innovative perspectives on histories and cultural traditions. APT 8 prompts us to challenge assumptions and reconsider the relations between images, bodies, and spaces. We invite discussion on traditions and legacies of art practices and of art histories. We also invite analysis of new parameters for the study and practice of art, including the transformation of the image or of the presence of the body in art today. If the end of art history came with post-colonial/postmodern critique, what happens to such a critique long after these have become familiar discourse? Can we still presume that post-colonial/postmodern critique operate in opposition to a static and resistant orthodoxy? Have such discourses produced hegemonies of their own? What is the status of criticality now? What are the new orthodoxies? What image(s) of art, the artist, and art-historical inquiry do we need to consider in the age of digital media communication or of global contemporary?

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