2009 Daphne Mayo Lecture
Wednesday 23 September 6.00pm
HOW ABORIGINES INVENTED THE IDEA OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE ART WORLD
When the Australian art world first noticed the Papunya Tula painting movement in the early 1980s, to many it seemed an historical aberration lacking any real legitimacy. Some critics worried that the paintings were 'meaningless decoration'. Another called them 'the Claytons of abstract art'. This is because the artists had seemingly arrived from the outside. They had not come through the ranks. To be accepted as contemporary art, Aboriginal artists had to first break into the art world and bend its paradigms to their own advantage. This talk charts some key moments in the journey that the art world made in its conceptual transformation of Aboriginal art from an anachronistic primitivism to treasured items of contemporary art.
 |
Ian McLean is Professor in Art History at the University of Western Australia.
He is the author of two books White Aborigines (Cambridge University Press,
1998) and The Art of Gordon Bennett (Craftsman House, 1996). His important
edited documentary history collection How Aborigines Invented the Idea of
Contemporary Art a documentary history 1980-2006 (Institute of Modern Art
and Power Publications, Sydney, in press) will be published this year.
He is on the Advisory Council of the postcolonial art journal Third Text.
|
Refreshments will be served after the lecture.
Free. All welcome.
RSVP Friday 18 September
Presented by The University of Queensland Art Museum and The School of English, Media Studies and Art History
in association with The Alumni Association of the University of Queensland Inc.
2009 Mayne Centre Lecture
Thursday 5 November 6.00pm
BEYOND THE ARCHIBALD: ASPECTS OF AUSTRALIAN PORTRAITURE 1880–1960
Australian portraiture covers a wide range of subjects, beyond the depictions of the celebrated or the ‘leaders’ in society. In the period 1880–1960, there was great diversity in the people portrayed, from the theatrical Victorians and Edwardians, through modern women of the 1920s to the more angry images of the 1940s. While some Edwardian portraits were painted on a grand scale for showing at the Royal Academy, many other portraits were intimate and private works. In painting portraits, Australian artists have often challenged the predictable and pushed boundaries in both their choice of subject and their painterly approach – creating controversy and debate.
 |
DR ANNA GRAY is the Head of Australian Art and Senior Curator of Australian Painting
and Sculpture before 1920at the National Gallery of Australia. Dr Gray was previously
Director of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at The University of Western Australia from
1995-2001, after 15 years at the Australian War Memorial, where she was Head of Art.
Dr Gray has curated major exhibitions for the National Gallery of Australia, including
McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907-17; George W. Lambert: heroes and icons;
Constable: Impressions of land, sea and sky; and The Edwardians: Secrets and Desires.
She also has written, co-written and edited a number of volumes on the art and artists of Australia.
|
The Mayne Centre Lecture is sponsored by Philip Bacon Galleries.