Annual Conference Perth, 6 – 8 December 2017 Acknowledgements | Art and Its Directions
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ANNUAL CONFERENCE PERTH, 6 – 8 DECEMBER 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | ART AND ITS DIRECTIONS The University of Western Australia and the AAANZ 2017 Conference Committee acknowledge and celebrate the Whadjuk Nyungar people, the traditional owners of the land on which this University is built, and pay our respects to elders past and present. This event is sponsored by the Cultural Precinct at the University of Western Australia, with particular support from the Berndt Museum and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. I thank Professor Ted Snell, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, for his enthusiasm for the project from its inception; and Professor Kent Anderson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Community and Engagement), for his support of a community partnership between UWA and the AAANZ, which allowed for the waiver of venue hire fees on campus. The office of Professor Robyn Owens, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), also provided valuable funds for the conference; and through its previous Dean, Professor Simon Anderson, the School of Design at UWA sponsored the travel of keynote speaker Dr Anthony Gardner. I would like to acknowledge the support of the AAANZ: Dr Anthony White, President of the Association, offered much appreciated advice over the year, and Giles Fielke and Dr Katrina Grant were most helpful with all web and communications matters. At UWA Vyonne Walker has played an invaluable role in the management of the conference, as Conference Administrator. Emeritus Professor Richard Read and Dr Wendy Garden kindly accepted my invitation to lead the two streams in the Postgraduate Day. I also thank those who agreed to chair both postgraduate and open sessions, and to participate in the plenary session. I am very appreciative of the contribution of keynote speakers, Professor Anne Dunlop, Dr Anthony Gardner and Dr Vanessa Russ. I thank Erica Persak, Executive Administrator of the Kerry Stokes Collection, and staff, for generously hosting the special conference viewing of this extraordinary collection. The Perth Convention Bureau provided funding for promotion of the conference; and Dr Susanna Castleden kindly allowed us to use a detail of her artwork, Finding your way, on conference publicity. UWA Guild volunteers, Cultural Precinct student placement volunteers, postgraduates, and staff of the Berndt Museum and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery generously gave of their time to assist with the conference. Finally, I thank the Conference Committee for their contributions throughout the year. Sally Quin Chair of the Conference Committee, AAANZ 2017 1 THE ART ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (AAANZ) The Art Association of Australia & New Zealand (AAANZ) is the peak professional body for the region’s art writers, curators, and artists. Since 1974 it has fostered the dissemination of knowledge and debate about art, curatorship, and artistic practice throughout the region. By increasing the visibility of Australasian artists, curators and writers and encouraging critical inquiry into their work, the Association plays an important role in supporting the resilience and sustainability of the local visual arts sector. The principal activities of the Association are the publication of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (ANZJA), holding an annual conference, and administering annual prizes which recognise outstanding achievement across the local and international art publishing industry. Through these activities, the Association acts as an established and highly successful advocate for the visual arts in Australia and New Zealand. AAANZ CONFERENCE COMMITTEE, PERTH 2017 Amy Barrett-Lennard, Director, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Emily Brink, Assistant Professor, School of Design, UWA Robert Cook, Curator of Contemporary Design and International Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia Andrew Lynch, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions; Professor, English and Cultural Studies, UWA Kit Messham-Muir, Associate Professor, School of Design and Art, Curtin University Sally Quin, Chair of the Conference Committee; Curator, the University of Western Australia Art Collection Vanessa Russ, Associate Director, Berndt Museum, UWA Ted Snell, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, UWA Paul Uhlmann, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University Vyonne Walker, Conference Administrator SPONSORS 2 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS | ART AND ITS DIRECTIONS 6.00pm, Wednesday 6 December 2017, Murdoch Lecture Theatre, Arts Building Professor Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne Leonardo, the Coming Apocalypse, and the Global History of Art Abstract: This past month's sale of a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci for a record-setting $450 million USD is one of those events that brings art and art history into the public domain. The story has all the elements of a Dan Brown novel, from Russian billionaires to corrupt politicians and shadowy international organizations. Much of the coverage has treated the sale either as a black joke or a sign of the coming moral apocalypse - another case of global capital gone terribly wrong. Yet the roots of our global art world can be linked to shifts in the same early modern period that created the painting itself. This lecture will use the sale as a starting point to discuss this global Renaissance within the larger project to write a global history of art. Biography: Professor Anne Dunlop holds the Herald Chair in Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. She has also taught at Yale University and at Tulane University. She works on Italian and European art in the later Middle Ages and early modern period, and for several years now has been researching and writing on the links between Italy and Eurasia in the Mongol period. She has been a Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University, at Peking University, and at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, where last year she organized a two-day exploratory workshop, ‘The Mongols and the Writing of Global History.’ Her most recent books include: Andrea del Castagno and the Limits of Painting (2015); The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c 1250-1750 (co-edited, 2014); and the exhibition and catalogue Early Modern Faces (2014). Another edited book will appear this year with Amsterdam University Press: Antipodean Early Modern: European Art in Australian Collections, 1200-1600. 9.00am Thursday 7 December 2017, Murdoch Lecture Theatre, Arts Building Dr Vanessa Russ, Associate Director, Berndt Museum, University of Western Australia Professor Ronald Berndt: A Response to the 1971 Lecture ‘Changing Face of Aboriginal Art’ Abstract: Before the so-called boom in Aboriginal Art in the 1980s, anthropologists were acquiring objects for research. Ronald and Catherine Berndt from the University of Western Australia were two such researchers who, over their lifetimes from the late 1930s – 1990s engaged with communities, noted and collected valuable research and occasionally purchased objects and works of art from the people they became acquainted with. Their work included the founding of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology as a research and teaching collection in the 1970s. Their passion for Aboriginal Australia extended into comparative research including doctorates focused on Papua New Guinea and comparative research more generally into Asia, Melanesia and Oceania. With this comprehensive and detailed overview they were able to apply anthropology to challenge European views, to advocate for change and to influence government attitudes of the day. Though today the collective mantra suggests that all anthropology is bad, without such activities, neither museums nor art 3 galleries would truly possess the collections and the cultural etiquette which includes Aboriginal employees in curatorial and educational roles, that they do now. This paper reviews a lecture Ronald Berndt gave at the Octagon Theatre at UWA over 50 years ago. Partly to reflect upon the work and theories that he had unpacked over the years and partly to challenge the idea of art history itself as some universal hegemony that all must reside under to be counted. As trained art historians, we often become territorial in our approach to investigating and understanding the fine arts – but I can’t help but wonder what value anthropology might bring, particularly to such cultural disruptions as those existing between Aboriginal Australia and Western Europe today. Biography: Vanessa Russ is the Associate Director of the Berndt Museum at the University of Western Australia. Vanessa worked at the Department of Culture and the Arts as a business analyst, before taking up the role at the Berndt Museum. As the Associate Director, Vanessa focuses on the importance of this Aboriginal-led university museum to create a dynamic facility for all Australians to learn about the first peoples, while engaging young Australian Aboriginal people in new ways of accessing cultural knowledge. Vanessa was born in Derby and raised between Derby and Ngullagunda (Gibb River Cattle Station) and has family connections to Ngarinyin and Gija people in the Kimberley. She was awarded Honours (Fine Arts) at the UNSW 2009 and returned to Western Australia to attain a PhD in Fine Art at the University of Western Australia in 2013. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust in 2014, in which she investigated the effects of national identity in mainstream art museums on Indigenous populations, travelling across