Lectures & Forums 2012

In 2012, the Melbourne Art Foundation expanded the Lecture and Forum Program with the creation of the Melbourne Art Fair 2012 Plenary Program Presented in Association with Museum Victoria.

The new Lecture and Forum Program for Melbourne Art Fair 2012 included the Melbourne Art Foundation 2012 Lecture opening Melbourne Art Week on Monday 30 July at BMW Edge, Fed Square followed by four days of 10am sessions, Lectures, Forums and Artists Talks during the Fair, Thursday 2 - Sunday 5 August, taking place opposite the Royal Exhibition Building at the Melbourne Museum. 

 

  • Melbourne Art Foundation 2012 Lecture

    BMW Edge, Fed Square, Monday 30 July, 6pm

    Melbourne Art Week launched with the Melbourne Art Foundation 2012 Lecture.

    Speaker: Jonathan Watkins

    Title: It's the End of the Art World as we Know It (and I feel fine) 

    Abstract:
    Our art world is at once a place for free critical thinking and the most conservative sophism. The latter results from an all-too-human faith in art, epitomised by a booming art market based on suspensions of disbelief. Otherwise, art as an institution continues to interrogate itself, pushing at the limits of its definition to the point that the end of art (as we know it) is the logical conclusion. Then art will be nothing if not a pseudo-religion. This lecture is a speculation on what the future holds for contemporary art through a consideration of work by artists such as Duchamp, Utamaro, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Craig Martin, Fischli and Weiss, Xu Zhen and Shimabuku.

    Biography: Jonathan Watkins, Director, Ikon Gallery

    Jonathan Watkins (born 1957) is an English curator, and is currently Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Watkins emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969 and studied Philosophy and History of Art at the University of Sydney, where he later taught. He was curator of the Chisenhale Gallery in London during which period this relatively small local gallery became an internationally known centre of excellence - many of the Artists shown at that time later going on to major acclaim including a number of Turner Prize winners, Watkins later moved to the Serpentine Gallery from 1995 to 1997 and worked in a freelance capacity as curator of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998. Watkins now lives in Birmingham, England. He currently directs the Ikon Gallery, and recently unveiled plans for a new museum of modern art in Birmingham.

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  • Thursday 2 August 2012

    Melbourne Museum Theatre

    Imagining cultural entanglements: Exhibiting art in the Asian century

    Morning Lecture, 10am-11am

    The Vernacular Contemporary

    Annapurna Garimella

    Abstract:

    Contemporary vernacular art in India includes craft, folk, tribal, ritual, temple, classical, domestic, self-taught and sometimes popular art forms and practices. This umbrella category sees and produces a collaborative and conflictual relationship between these various art forms and also acknowledges the inherent diversity of the vernacular art sphere, while also positioning them in a critical, questioning relationship with the prevalent idea of the contemporary. Garimella will discuss these issues through the history of exhibitions and specific curatorial practices in modern, post-Independence India and conclude by thinking about how contemporary vernacular and Anglophone artists engage with the idea of the vernacular.

    To view this lecture, please see below.

    Morning panel session, 11.30am-1pm

    Contemporary Asian Art Exhibitions: Curatorial strategies in the wake of the "Asian Century"

    Bala Starr (Convener)
    Alexie Glass-Kantor
    Natalie King
    Miao Xiaochun
    Aaron Seeto
    Barbara London 

    Abstract:

    At the dawn of the Asian century, how can we develop enduring curatorial methodologies within the Asian region? What is the impact of government agendas on funding models? Does cultural diplomacy play a role in shaping cross-cultural relationships? This panel unravels these pertinent questions by pausing to reflect on the broader Australian–Asian relationship through the prism of exhibition practice.


     

    Lunchtime artist forum, 1.30pm-2.30pm

    Danius Kesminas
    Rob McHaffie
    Kate Rohde 

    Abstract:

    This forum comprises three artists, each of whom have undertaken significant residencies in Asian countries in recent years. Danius Kesminas will discuss his collaboration with the Indonesian art/music group PUNKASILA, which began during his residency in Indonesia in 2006; Rob McHaffie will discuss his residency in Malaysia in 2011; and Kate Rohde will discuss her residency in Japan in 2008. 



     Afternoon Lecture, 3pm-4pm

    The Asia Pacific Triennial: Curating in the expanded field

    Russell Storer

    Abstract:

    The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7) at the Queensland Art Gallery marks 20 years of this project. The APT broke new ground in the 1990s by offering, for the first time, a sustained dialogue between the contemporary art of Asia, the Pacific and Australia. While it remains one of the few recurring exhibitions to focus on this geographic region, it is now one of a number of large-scale exhibitions in Asia, within a contemporary art landscape that has transformed dramatically over the past decade. How has the APT responded to developments in Asian and Pacific contemporary art in the new century, and how does it differ from other regional biennales such as Singapore?

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  • Friday 3 August 2012

    Melbourne Museum Theatre

    Why paint? Concerns in contemporary painting 

    Morning Lecture, 10am-11am

    Contemporary painting: "Stones really are precious sometimes, just as fingers are sometimes delicate…"

    Jan Bryant

    Abstract:

    Perhaps the most brutal and devastating allegation levelled against painting last century was the widespread claim that it was too tired, too weighed down by the burden of its own history, to make us think or see anew. But while we know that something very particular arises from the materiality of making and from the affect of materials, it seems unproductive today to argue for the 'supremacy' of one material over another. Instead, painting has absorbed the lessons of conceptualism, claiming both an appreciation for the specificity of materials, while also encouraging broad, non-denominational thinking. Painting has survived its premature death sentence to persist today as a resilient and vibrant area of contemporary practice. This lecture will propose that it is now possible for painting to be both itself and to be not itself, to be both painting and not painting, without losing sight of its essential difference.

    To view this lecture, please see below

    Morning panel session, 11.30am-1pm

    In this place now…Painting: A discussion of contemporary, post-conceptual painting

    Jan Bryant (convener)
    Rebecca Coates
    André Hemer
    Ryan Renshaw 

    Abstract:

    This forum is dedicated to discussing concerns in contemporary painting, framed by questions, provocations, debates and lectures that address directly the question of painting as a post-conceptual medium. Rather than attempting to dredge up old dichotomies or discipline-specific biases, this forum brings together an academic, a curator, a dealer and a painter to encourage debate around where painting, in its broadest definition, sits today.

     

    Lunchtime artist forum, 1.30pm-2.30pm

    Amber Wallis
    Grant Nimmo
    Julia Gorman
    Matthew Hopkins

    Abstract:

    This panel comprises four painters, each of whom work in vastly different manners: alternatingly utilising the visual languages of abstraction, figuration and appropriation, as well as expanding painting to incorporate elements of collage, drawing, sculpture, installation art and spatial practices. In this panel, each of the artists will speak on the work of another artist — not necessarily a painter — who has impacted on the direction of their own painting practice in some way. Amber Wallis will speak on the American late-modernist painter Cy Twombly and the Russian expressionist Wassily Kandinsky; Grant Nimmo will speak on the contemporary American painter Dana Schulz; Julia Gorman will speak on the contemporary American sculptural and installation artist, Jessica Stockholder; and Matthew Hopkins will speak about the American artist Jim Shaw, specifically his 'Thrift Store Paintings' and his ongoing series of 'Dream Drawings'.

    Afternoon Lecture, 3pm-4pm

    Regarding pain/t/hing

    Peter Tyndall

    Abstract:

    A brief history of the typo in Art: "Dear Theo, Send more pain. Vincent"

    To view this lecture, please see below

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  • Saturday 4 August 2012

    Melbourne Museum Theatre

    Making worlds: Science fiction and art 

    Morning Lecture, 10am-11am

    Fictionalising the Present: Science Fictions and Contemporary Art

    Amelia Barikin

    Abstract:

    'We are living in a science fiction novel that we all collaborate on', or so says sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson. From techno-culture to advanced weaponry systems, the dreams of history have become the scientific realities of today. What does this mean for contemporary art? This lecture explores the emergence of 'science fictionality' in the work of a number of contemporary artists including Aleksandra Mir, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gurksy and Pierre Huyghe. It suggests that the presence of science fiction in art is now determinable through analysis of behavioural structures and speculative methodologies rather than the investigation of icons, signs and objects. This shift not only revises previous understandings of science fiction art but also offers another way of approaching the work completed by a vast selection of artistic practitioners in recent years: a means of identifying patterns as yet unrecognised in the science fictions of contemporary art.

    To view this lecture, please see below
     

    Morning panel session, 11.30am-12.30pm

    Making worlds: Science fiction and art

    Amelia Barikin (convener)
    Anthony White
    Chris Palmer
    Sarah Tutton

    Abstract:

    This panel considers the relationship between art and science fiction in multiple historical contexts: under the signs of modernism, postmodernism and contemporaneity.

    Chris Palmer's talk will consider the concept that reality (or should we say "reality"?) is becoming more and more science-fictional, as the future overtakes us before we get to it. His talk will survey some of the evidence for this — from finance, weaponry, language, the body, and physics — and will suggest how these developments actually often refute the idealistic futurism of classic science fiction.

    Anthony White's talk will examine how fictional space travel has been a subject for avant-garde art. Early in the 20thcentury, Soviet avant-garde painters in Russia took space travel as an inspiration for their work. In the 1960s, the Italian painter Lucio Fontana represented the experience of the astronaut in his abstract paintings and sculptures. In 2005, Cesar Saez proposed a work titled "Geostationary Banana over Texas" which would enter the stratosphere over the United States of America. In all three cases, the fictional dimension of the artists' proposals acted as a spur to thinking about both the present and future.

    Sarah Tutton's talk will consider science fiction in relation to contemporary art and the moving image, focusing on the work of Julian Rosefeldt and reflecting on her experience as a co-curator of the exhibition Star Voyager at ACMI, Melbourne in 2011.



    Lunchtime artist forum, 1.30pm-2.30pm

    Justin Andrews
    Emily Floyd 
    Eddy Parritt
    Patrick Pound
    Nathan Gray 

    Abstract:

    This forum comprises three artists and one collaborative pair of artists speaking about some of their favourite science-fictional or space-related texts.

    Justin Andrews will speak about Nigel Calder's 1975 book, Violent Universe.

    Emily Floyd and Eddy Parritt will discuss their collaborative project Permaculture crossed with Feminist Science Fiction through the prism of locally specific examples of science fiction, including Koori Science Fiction in the writing of George Turner; Permaculture Terraforming theories; and The Westall Event, a mass UFO Encounter that occurred in Clayton in 1966. The presentation will focus on Science Fiction Utopia as a mechanism toward new symbolic hierarchies and cognitive perceptions of the Melbourne landscape.

    Patrick Pound will speak about Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and JG Ballard's Crash.

    Nathan Gray's talk will consider science fiction short stories and sound in relation to JG Ballard's Sound Sweep and Phillip K Dick's The Preserving Machine, both of which explore sound, music production and reproduction through fanciful technologies. Like real technological shifts, these science-fictional machines alter how we conceptualise sound and propose novel ways of hearing and experiencing in general.


    Afternoon Lecture, 3pm-4pm

    Dreaming the mainstream: Science fiction and contemporary art

    Mark von Schlegell

    Abstract:

    As science-fictional modes continue to find expression in current international art, science fiction finds itself a genre in decline. To what extent is science fiction's incorporation into and transformation by contemporary art an exemplary feature of that decline? This lecture, incorporating selected readings from Mark von Schlegell's writings on art and science fiction, will focus on a revisionary political history of publishing to bring such questions into peculiar focus.

    To view this lecture, please see below

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  • Sunday 5 August 2012

    Melbourne Museum Theatre

    Futures: Theorising contemporary Aboriginal art and the market

    Morning Lecture, 10am-11am

    How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art

    Ian McLean

    Abstract:

    Ian McLean will discuss the background to his recent book How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art: An anthology of writing on Aboriginal Art 1980–2006 (2011), which traces the artworld's critical response to Indigenous art since it was accepted as contemporary rather than primitive art. The book focuses on the ideas that shaped this momentous response to the art, and asks what it means to call Indigenous art "contemporary art". He will address why the book, which is in the form of an anthology of writing since 1980, took the form that it did, what the often very different ideas, approaches and interpretations of Aboriginal art during this period have in common, and what their legacy is for the future of Indigenous art.
     
    To view the video of this lecture, please see below.

     Morning panel session, 11.30am-1pm

    Futures: Australian Aboriginal Art and the Market

    Kira Randolph (convener)
    Christopher Hodges
    D'Lan Davidson
    Susan Lowish 
    Richard Bell 

    Abstract:

    After a long draught, recent tentative success at Mossgreen and Sotheby's Australia have us speculating about the future of the Australian Aboriginal art market. This panel comprises expert panelists from the primary and secondary markets, an academic, and an artist, as they offer their unique perspectives on the Aboriginal art market: past, present, and future.
     

    Lunchtime artist forum, 1.30pm-2.30pm

    Dianne Jones
    Ben McKeown
    Pamela Joyce
    Brian Martin

    Abstract:

    This forum comprises talks by three contemporary artists whose work explores Aboriginal identity or cultural legacies in different ways: Ben McKeown, Dianne Jones and Brian Martin. It also includes a talk by Pamela Joyce, an artist-weaver from the Australian Tapestry Workshop, who has collaborated with several different indigenous artists to create new major works in recent years. In this forum, McKeown, Jones and Martin will each discuss the work of another artist that has impacted on their own practices, and Joyce will discuss her collaboration with McKeown to produce his tapestry Spring Street end for the State Library of Victoria, and Anmanari Brown's Kungkarrakalpa (The Seven Sisters), which will be shown at Melbourne Art Fair 2012.
     

    Afternoon Lecture, 3pm-4pm

    waterline

    Judy Watson

    Abstract:

    Internationally respected artist Judy Watson will share insights on her most recent works. Judy Watson is known for her lyrical paintings, taking inspiration from the Waanyi country of her forebears. 

     To view the video of this lecture, please see below.