AAANZ 2016 THE WORK OF ART ART ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND ANNUAL CONFERENCE 1-3 December 2016 school of art, australian national university, canberra, australia CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS & BIOGRAPHIES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Australian National University and the AAANZ 2016 Conference Committee acknowledge and celebrate the First Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and pay our respect to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present This event was generously supported by the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences through their Conference funding scheme and by the Research School of Humanities and the Arts External Visitors funding scheme. The AAANZ 2016 Conference Committee very much appreciate this contribution. The Committee would also like to acknowledge the support of the School of Art, Australian National University (ANU) and our event partners the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG). We thank the NGA, in particular its Director, Gerard Vaughan, and staff Edith Young and Dr Shaune Lakin for their assistance in hosting Dr Melissa Chiu’s keynote address. We thank the NPG, in particular its Director Angus Trumble, Dr Christopher Chapman and other staff for hosting the Conference ‘party’ on their premises. The involvement of AAANZ was greatly appreciated, with particular thanks to Dr Anthony White, Giles Simon Fielke and Dr Katrina Grant for assistance with communications, web and other support. The Head of the ANU School of Art, Associate Professor Denise Ferris, generously provided ten student bursaries to support current and recent postgraduate student participation in this year’s AAANZ conference. Dr Sarah Scott played an instrumental role in the conceptual development, organisation and management of the Postgraduate Student Day. Dr Robert Wellington kindly fostered student volunteer involvement and facilitated and managed publication and marketing enquiries. Cindy DePina and Barbara McConchie provided sage advice and assistance on financial and administrative matters. Helen Ennis, Ursula Frederick and Alex Burchmore provided vital assistance with communications and conference management. Finally, many thanks to our keen student volunteers and the wonderful Canberra arts community. Head of Committee: Helen Ennis Conference Co-ordinator: Ursula Frederick Conference Assistant Co-ordinator: Alex Burchmore Design: Conference timetable and program cover by Fiona Edge of DesignEdge Program editing and compilation: Ursula Frederick and Alex Burchmore Catering: Hudsons Catering Cover image: Peter Tyndall, detail - A Person Looks At A Work of Art/someone looks at something… 1987 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Australian Print Workshop Archive 2. purchased with the assistance of the Gordon Darling Australasian Print Fund 2002 1 AAANZ 2016 CONFERENCE COMMITTEE Peter Alwast is an artist and lecturer in painting at the Australian National University School of Art. His practice employs a range of media including video, computer graphics, painting and drawing. In 1999, Alwast was awarded a Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship and since completing his Masters in Fine Art degree from the Parsons School of Design, New School University, New York in 2001, he has exhibited nationally and internationally. Dr Christopher Chapman is Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery where he has produced major exhibitions exploring diverse experiences of selfhood and identity. He joined the Gallery in 2008 and was promoted to Senior Curator in 2011. He works closely with the Gallery’s management team to drive collection and exhibition strategy. Working in the visual arts field since the late 1980s, Christopher has held curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. He has lectured in visual arts and culture for the Australian National University and his PhD thesis examined youth masculinity and themes of self-sacrifice in photography and film. Professor Helen Ennis FAHA is Director of the Australian National University School of Art’s Centre for Art History and Art Theory and the Sir William Dobell Chair of Art History. Helen specialises in Australian photographic history and is concerned with finding new ways of thinking, curating and writing about photographs. As an independent curator and writer she works closely with national cultural institutions. Major research projects include In a New Light: Photography and Australia 1850s–2000 (2003–04), Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography (2005) and Reveries: Photography and Mortality (2007). Her book Photography and Australia was published by Reaktion, London in 2007 and Wolfgang Sievers was published in 2011. Dr Ursula Frederick is an artist, writer and archaeologist. Her doctoral research in visual arts, at the Australian National University, examined the aesthetics and impacts of automobility. Ursula’s art practice involves a range of media including photography, video and printmaking. As well as exhibiting, Ursula has published articles on art, graffiti, automobility and inscriptions including, with co-authors Dr Peter Hobbins and Associate Professor Anne Clarke, the book Stories from the Sandstone: Inscriptions from Australia’s Immigrant Past (Arbon, 2016). Ursula was recently awarded an ARC DECRA for her project Visualising Archaeologies: Art and the creation of contemporary archaeology, commencing in 2017. Dr Anthea Gunn completed a PhD in art history for her thesis Imitation Realism and Australian Art in 2010 at the ANU. She previously worked at the National Museum of Australia and is currently Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial. She has published in the Journal of Australian Studies and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, amongst others. Her research currently focuses on the official war art scheme during the First World War. Dr Shaune Lakin is Senior Curator Photography at the National Gallery of Australia. He previously held appointments as Director of Monash Gallery of Art (Melbourne) and Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Australia. He is the author of Contact: Photographs from the Australian War Memorial collection (2006) and more recently The world is beautiful (2015) with Anne O'Hehir. Professor Chris McAuliffe is Professor of Practice-led Research at the Australian National University School of Art. From 2000–2013 he was Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the 2 University of Melbourne. He taught art history and theory at the University of Melbourne (1988– 2000). In 2011–12, he was the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. Chris has curated exhibitions at the Ian Potter Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of NSW, include America: Painting a Nation (2013), The Shilo Project (2010) and Jon Cattapan: The Drowned World (2006). Dr Sarah Scott is a Lecturer in the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at ANU School of Art teaching across the first year, curatorial, honours and postgraduate programs. In 2012 she received the Rydon fellowship at Kings College, London to work on her research concerning Australian exhibitions of Australian art for export. From 2009 to 2012 she convened and taught in the Museums and Collections program at ANU. Her current research interests include Australian art for export, Commonwealth art and Indigenous art. Her most recent publication, ‘Art, cold war diplomacy and commonwealth: Australian and Canadian art at the Tate gallery 1962–64’ is forthcoming (2017) through the Journal of Australian Studies. Dr Robert Wellington is an art historian with a special interest in the role of material culture in history making and cross-cultural exchange. Prior to receiving a PhD in art history from the University of Sydney, Robert had ten years experience in various roles in the contemporary arts sector. He is the author of Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past (Ashgate, 2015). His research interests include: French art, 1500–1900; theories of history; the history of collecting; antiquarianism; material culture; print culture; images of war; mapping; and transcultural aesthetics. 3 CONFERENCE SESSION & PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS DAY 1 Thursday December 1, 2016 – Postgraduate Student Day Sir Roland Wilson Building SESSION 1. IN THE MUSEUM Displaying Australian art history: Dr Ewing and the Ewing Collection Cathleen Rosier (University of Melbourne) The history of Australia’s art history has traditionally been examined through the development of its literature, principally, the survey text. The relationship of the exhibition of art to this history is relatively understudied. This presentation aims to explore the display of works of art in the survey discourse through the University of Melbourne’s Ewing Collection. Gifted to the University in 1938 by Dr Samuel Arthur Ewing, the Collection consists of 56 works of art by Australian artists from 1862 to 1940. Acquired between 1908 and 1940, the Collection explores Australian landscape paintings, with select genre and figural works also included. Oil and watercolour paintings are featured, with several drawings, etchings and a plaster caste present. As a collector, Ewing favoured Australian and Australian-based male artists working in the Heidelberg style. Although the figural imagery present is predominately female, only two women artists are included, and Ewing eschews an indigenous presence from both the art and artists in the Collection.