Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Sites Of Cultural Production In Response To Mass Extinction, Stephanie S. Turner, Evamarie Lindahl, Tara Nicholson

Animal Studies Journal

This conversation, mediated by Tara Nicholson, considers Stephanie Turner and EvaMarie Lindahl’s research in cultural representations of extinction and investigations of more-than-human forms of storytelling through an art historical lens. In response to Lori Gruen’s classification, extinction is a distinctive loss of ‘animal cultures’. It is more than biodiversity destruction or a static inventory of a species’ death. Nonhuman ways of building bonds, reproducing, teaching offspring, constructing homes and mourning the dead, are all systems of knowledge lost in extinction (Gruen et al. 2017). This conversation offers compassionate ways of bearing witness to species destruction and a space for empathy …

Visualising Anthropocene Extinctions: Mapping Affect In The Works Of Naeemah Naeemaei, Linda Williams

Animal Studies Journal

While many writers have advocated the importance of narrative as a means of engaging with the problem of extinction, this paper considers what the qualities of visual aesthetics bring to this field. In addressing this question, the discussion turns to the problem of the ethical limits of art raised by Adorno and takes a theoretical turn away from posthumanism to consider how visual responses can redirect attention back to human agency. The focus of visual analysis is on five paintings by the contemporary Iranian artist Naeemeh Naeemaei. Neither exclusively Western nor overtly internationalist in their approach, these artworks refer to …

Nature In The Dark - Public Space For More-Than-Human Encounters, Jan Brueggemeier

Animal Studies Journal

Drawing on the continuing work of the Nature in the Dark (NITD) project, an art collaboration and publicity campaign between the Centre for Creative Arts (La Trobe University) and the Victorian National Parks Association (VNPA), this paper aims to explore some of the disciplinary crossovers between art, science and philosophy as encountered by this project and to think about their implications for an environmental ethics more generally. Showcasing animal life from Victoria, Australia, the NITD video series I and II invited international artists to create video works inspired by ecological habitat surveys from the Victorian National Parks land and water. …

Remembering The Huia: Extinction And Nostalgia In A Bird World, Cameron Boyle

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines the role of nostalgia in practices of remembering the Huia, an extinct bird endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand. It suggests that nostalgia for the Huia specifically, and New Zealand's indigenous birds more generally, has occurred as both restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. It argues that the former problematically looks to recreate a past world in which birds flourished. In contrast, the paintings of Bill Hammond and the sound art of Sally Ann McIntyre are drawn on to explore the potential of reflective nostalgia for remembering the Huia, and New Zealand's extinct indigenous birds more generally, in a …

Confrontational Continuum: Modernism And The Psychedelic Art Of Martin Sharp, Michael K. Organ

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The Australian artist Martin Sharp (1942-2013) produced a series of psychedelic artworks in London between 1966-8, the most famous of which were the Disraeli Gears record cover for rock group Cream and the Bob Dylan Blowin’ in the Mind poster. Sharp’s work exemplifies the connection between early twentieth century Modernist art movements, Pop art and acid-induced psychedelia of the 1960s. In addition, the poster Max Ernst: The Birdman from 1967, represents a homage to Dada and Surrealism, with special reference to anarchy, desire, and freedom of expression. In the spirit of Dada, the poster is meaningfully confrontational, exposing the darker …

Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson

Animal Studies Journal

This paper outlines my current sculptural research project bloodlines focusing on the ways in which dairy cows are entangled with multiple biotechnologies and the wider environment. bloodlines brings extant works such as fleshlumps, boobscape and slink, together with new works, to represent the dairy industry, the environmental impacts of animal agriculture and the biotech innovations of in-vitro meat and bio-fabricated leather. These works are linked together by a web of interconnected fluids: excreta, milk and blood. In this new work, I hope to make the links between the dairy industry and these extended concerns both visceral and visible.

Stretching Out: Species Extinction And Planetary Aesthetics In Contemporary Art, Su Ballard

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

There is madness in species extinction. The horn has been removed from the last male northern white rhino on earth and he has two armed guards 24 hours a day. The huia in New Zealand were killed off by the desire for white-tipped tail feathers in Victorian hats. We fear the extinction of rhinos, we mourn the extinction of the huia, yet we might need reminding to also show concern for the extinction of the dung beetle. This paper looks at the ways that artists are engaging with these difficult events. By placing Gayatri Spivak's call for a planetarity of …

Old Sites, New Visions: Art And Archaeology Collide In Cyrus, Christopher J. Barker, Diana Wood Conroy

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Over the past two decades Australian archaeologists have been slowly uncovering the World Heritagelisted ancient theatre site at Paphos in Cyprus. The Hellenistic-Roman period theatre was used for performance for over six centuries from around 300 BC to the late fourth century AD. There is also considerable evidence of activity on the site after the theatre was destroyed, particularly during the Crusader era.

Reframing Pictures: Reading The Art Of Appropriation, Liz Linden

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Trace 2015: Biennial Exhibition And Art Auction In The Streets Of 4101 (Broken Memories), Madeleine T. Kelly

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Her art explores the materiality of images – in particular painting, as an earthen testimony figured from the ground that speaks of the primal frontiers of art, such as material transformation, as well as environmental contingencies. In this context, her work avoids dogmatism by depicting protean and rubric worlds.

Book Review: Constructing An Avant Garde: Art In Brazil, 1949-1979 By S. Martins, Michael Leggett

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

To anyone unfamiliar with the interventions made by avant-garde artists into the art world and occasionally wider society during the middle of the 20th century, this volume delivers a very readable account. The artists, the objects they made and the discussions they generated are selected here in relation to the particular practices and contexts emergent in Brazil following the chaos of World War II (during which the country remained neutral). In keeping with a historiographical approach—rather than an art historical account—the author introduces an initial group of Brazilian artists attracted to ideas concerned with the nature of the object in …

Travels With My Art: Moya Dyring And Margaret Olley, Melissa J. Boyde

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Moya Dyring (1909–1967) was born in Melbourne where she studied at the National Art School. After a successful solo show of her early experimental cubist paintings, she travelled to France where she remained for most of her life. From 1949 Dyring lived in an apartment/studio on the Ile Saint-Louis, a small island on the Seine behind Notre Dame. The apartment became widely known as Chez Moya - an Australian salon in the heart of Paris. Over the next two decades Dyring hosted a transient coterie of Australian artists at Chez Moya. Margaret Olley was one of the young artists who …

Introduction: Art And Activism In Post-Disaster Japan, Alexander Brown, Vera C. Mackie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

On 11 March 2011, the northeastern area of Japan, known as Tōhoku, was hit by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami. The disaster damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of a number of such facilities located in what was already an economically disadvantaged region.2 This led to a series of explosions and meltdowns and to the leakage of contaminated water and radioactive fallout into the surrounding area. Around 20,000 people were reported dead or missing, with a disproportionate number from the aged population of the region. Nearly four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced: evacuated …

Feminism And Art: Unexpected Encounters, Susan (Su) Ballard, Agnieszka Golda

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Since the revolutions of the 1960s, feminism and art have created spaces for thinking and rethinking the links between gender and creativity. Art has been challenged both within and without the frame, as artists and feminists disrupt and complicate pre-established modes of production and representation.

Signal Eight Times: Nature, Catastrophic Extinction Events And Contemporary Art, Su Ballard

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Human animals bought up in the Western tradition tend to describe their encounters with other species as exchanges of power, and when confronted with extinction rush to the defence of the species at risk. This essay documents a different approach to the defence of nature. Basing itself on the work of six contemporary artists and drawing on the thought of Donna Haraway and Gregory Bateson I show how it is possible to comprehend the catastrophic extinction of birds in New Zealand by thinking about ecology. I argue that rather than defend nature, these artworks stage small moments of encounter, which …

Contemporary Indigenous Art, Ian A. Mclean

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

A new exhibition of the NGV's collection of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander art explores Indigenous art history and culture from the early nineteenth century to now. Situating this display within broader contemporary art issues, Professor Ian McLean sheds light on the art market's recent past and potential future.

Book Review: The Art Of Censorship In Postwar Japan. Studies Of The Weatherhead East Asian Institute. By Kirsten Cather, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The practice of censorship is a divisive issue that is often justified on moral reasons rather than aesthetic or legalistic ones. It is perhaps because of the claims to morality rather than to the law that it is relatively rare for censorship (or more accurately in Japan’s case, obscenity) to be the subject of criminal trials. Yet, in Japan, from the occupation years through to the present day, there has been on average one high profile censorship trial per decade. In The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan, Kirsten Cather considers seven such censorship trials held between the 1950s and …

From Camp To Gay To Queer: David Mcdiarmid And Hiv/Aids Art, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

At the end of July, Melbourne hosted the 20th International AIDS Conference. A huge red AIDS 2014 sign perched on the Swanston Street Bridge between Flinders Street Station and the Melbourne Concert Hall.

The Global AIDS Village was in action at the other end of Southbank with a variety of displays from HIV/AIDS organisations from all over the world. One of the many associated events was the marvellous exhibition of gay artist David McDiarmid’s work, When This You See Remember Me. It is still on display at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

For a brief moment the HIV/AIDS epidemic …

A Robot Walks Into A Room: Google Art Project, The New Aesthetic, And The Accident Of Art, Susan (Su) Ballard

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

On the 1st February 2011 Google unleashed the Google Art Project, a new way to engage with the major collections of the world’s art galleries. With the Google Art Project came a new way of viewing, not just art but the other objects that inhabit art galleries. Google Art Project depends on a robot looking machine. This aesthetic machine is a different form of digital material that has entered into what have for a long time been quiet still spaces for human, and not machine contemplation. With an equal focus on the spaces between things as much as on the …

Blogging As Art, Art As Research, Lucas Ihlein

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Since 2003, I have used a blog to collect and publish my ideas about art and social engagement, or to write short accounts of artworks I have witnessed and participated in (Ihlein 2003). What motivates me to blog in this way is the desire to leave behind an experiential document of ephemeral art practices. Conceptual art, performance art, Happenings, Fluxus events and Expanded Cinema: all these constitute important moments in avant-garde art history which I 'know' only by accessing fragmentary, in complete archival documents - photographs, videotapes, artists' statements. For artists working today, these archives make a significant contribution to …

Philology, Or The Art Of Befriending The Text, Ika Willis

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This essay examines the 1960s/1970s' transformation of the text as an object of reading, and argues for an equivalent transformation of philology as a practice of reading. I focus on the oscillation between reading as literacy (the capacity to recognize and decipher a given language) and reading as interpretation (the capacity to respond to the text). This oscillation itself results from an irreducible ambiguity in the text: both a stable verbal artifact with a determinable form and a bearer of indeterminate meaning. Reading Roland Barthes's critique of philology and Ursula Le Guin's science-fictional paean to its possibilities ('The Author of …

New Australian Art Song For Low Voice, Lotte Latukefu

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

World Premieres were given of the following songs:

Bitter Cold; The Ghost Road; Autumn Thoughts- composer- Larry Sitsky At the Triton's Call- composer- May Howlett

The Churchie Art Award For Emerging Artists, Teo Treloar

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In contemporary art and culture, we are living within a constant flood of images, diluting our attention spans. Wollongong-based artist Teo Treloar would like to challenge our state, and to bring us back to central focus. He practices in painting and drawing, usually within an intimate scale, and uses a muted colour palette and minimal, relaxed tones.

Being In The Moment: Art And Mindfullness (Urban Abstractions), Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

NTI’s third art exhibition will continue to explore and develop the conversation and related themes of Australian Artists in the Asian Century. being in the moment: art and mindfulness will feature contemporary local artists whose works respond to teachings about mindfulness, and the concepts of attention and awareness.

All Night Silence: Live Experimental Sound In New Zealand Public Art Galleries, Su Ballard

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

Since the late 19th century there have been issues with the presentation and reception of sound and music in New Zealand public art galleries. During the first New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in 1889-1890 there were numerous musical events designed to prove New Zealand's position culturally and socially on the world stage. Audience members would spend the day traipsing around the enormous pavilions of the exhibition pausing to engage in a performance before blundering out to the next event. This mobile audience knew something about the relationship between music and art. Art was silent, static and contained within the …

The Art Of Transformation, Sarah B. Miller

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Re-Enacting Performance Art, Lucas M. Ihlein, Chris Hewitt, Andrea Saemann

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Lucas Ihlein’s re-enactment work has primarily revolved around Expanded Cinema from British artists of the 1970s. Working with Louise Curham as “Teaching and Learning Cinema”, Ihlein’s approach involves a carefully annotated and documented re-invention of the original works, paying particular attention to the technological specificity of film, video and digital media.

Engaging Aboriginal Art From The Idea Of Australia, Ian A. Mclean

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In writing the first national history of Australian art Bernard Smith was instrumental in inventing the idea of an Australian national culture. In this respect his histories should be understood in the context of a wider postcolonial – or at least post-empire – discourse that shaped the idea of Australia after the world wars. Galvanizing the many threads of this discourse was the idea of an independent nation state. What role did Aboriginal art have in this discourse? As a committed Marxist Smith had a great deal of sympathy for the downtrodden, including Aborigines. However the idea of the nation …

Media Art: Mediality And Art Generally, Brogan S. Bunt

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

The wide ranging, trans-disciplinary interest in technological media suggests the possibility of a new discipline concerned with the history, implications and practice of mediation. Within this context, the field of media art gains a new sense of coherence and identity. Given the lingering tension between media art and mainstream contemporary art, this may lead the latter to assert its disciplinary autonomy. This paper argues against such a move. Media art is better positioned as an integral strand within contemporary art and, more particularly, as a key space of creative enquiry and practice within a generally conceived contemporary art education.

The Art And Craft Of Radio Documentary: Some Australian Accents., Siobhan A. Mchugh

Faculty of Creative Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.