School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemSeeing art by people with experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma: a multi-dimensional framework(The Cunningham Dax Collection, 2008)Mental illness is a subject clouded by misunderstanding and prejudice. Creative works by people with an experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma are often similarly misunderstood. There is a tendency for such works to be viewed from one standpoint only, thereby denying their multi-faceted nature. The exhibition, The Art of Making Sense, has been developed to resolve one of these difficulties. Several years of research undertaken independently by the Cunningham Dax Collection, and more recently in partnership with several partner institutions, have led to the development of a “multi-dimensional” framework for exhibiting, viewing and understanding the art of people with mental illness and/or psychological trauma. The central idea behind the multi-dimensional framework is that creative work by people with experience of mental illness and/or psychological trauma cannot be understood through one perspective. As this exhibition proposes, such work can be viewed through several different interpretive frameworks including, but not limited to, the personal, the medical, the ethical, the historical, and the creative.
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ItemIan Friend: cryptic architecture(Andrew Baker Art Dealer, 2008)It is often assumed that structure is the antithesis of chaos, that architecture must define itself against nature’s randomness. But things are not that simple. The Italian Rationalist architects of the 1930s, for example, argued that a mathematical equation known as the Golden Section was visible in nature. The fact that the structure of nautilus shells adhered to this formula was read as evidence that order pervaded the natural world. Similarly, chaos theory has told us that what seems like disorganized activity in nature conforms to patterns that have shape and form.
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ItemArt and mental illness: an art historical perspective(Neami Splash Art, 2007)Mental illness has for centuries been closely associated in the popular imagination with exceptional creativity and great works of art. I will argue today that it is important not to be complacent about this association, as it has led to some grave misconceptions about the nature of mental illness. The persistence of such misconceptions in the media demonstrates that there is a pressing need for ongoing analysis and debate about appropriate and ethical ways in which to discuss, exhibit and interpret the art work of people who experience mental illness. Coming from an art historical perspective, I hope to suggest ways to make progress in this debate. For the purpose of today’s talk, in speaking of ‘art,’ I will be referring not only to those works judged to provide evidence of exceptional creativity but rather any created visual product in any medium. Mental illness will be defined as clinically significant, psychological syndromes associated with distress, disability or loss of freedom.
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ItemWhen historic time meets Julia Kristeva’s women’s time: the reception of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party in Australia( 2008)One of the first visual arts events of the 1988 bicentennial year was the staging of The Dinner Party (1979), a monumental artwork by the North American artist Judy Chicago at the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings. Completed in 1979, The Dinner Party has become emblematic of a particular form of feminist art practice: namely that which makes visible the body of women in both a literal and metaphoric sense. An enormous installation, The Dinner Party is a triangular table setting at which places are laid for the women that are missing from conventional historic narratives. The place settings include elaborate crockery with each plate adopting vaginal imagery that evokes particular characteristics of each woman's historic contribution.While attracting extremely high visitor numbers whenever the work is exhibited, the artwork itself has been widely criticised. The Melbourne exhibition of this work was no exception. However on this occasion there was an added dimension to the criticism: a parochial resistance to the importation of a foreign artwork. In this paper I explore this specific instance of border crossing in feminist art practice, and the claims made by many Australian art critics that superior work was being produced by local women artists. These arguments involved assertions that The Dinner Party’s visual aesthetic was dated, that Australian artists had adopted a similar imagery prior to Chicago and that whatever impact the work might have had in 1979, by 1988 it could only be regarded as a relic.
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ItemRepresenting the Piazza del Quirinal in the reign of Clement XII: Panini's 'View of the Piazza del Quirinale'( 2002)By the eighteenth century some subjects for Roman view-paintings already had a long pictorial tradition, while others only came to prominence as a result of a site acquiring a new significance in the wake of papal building programs. One of the most important of these new subjects was the Piazza del Quirinale.
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ItemPiranesi, Juvarra, and the triumphal bridge tradition( 2003)This article examines the idea of the triumphal bridge from the Renaissance to Piranesi, by way of Flavio Biondo, Onofrio Panvinio, Pirro Ligorio, Nicolas Poussin, Fischer von Erlach, and Filippo Juvarra, in order to explore attitudes toward the reception and representation of ancient architecture. It shows how the eighteenth-century theme of the "magnificent (triumphal) bridge" had its roots in topographical inquiry and examines the contribution that Piranesi's interest in the archaeological problem of the triumphal bridge made to the creative process that resulted in the "Ichnographia", the large map of the ancient Campus Martius in his 1762 "Campo Marzio".
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ItemThe ice-age(Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2007)Lee Bul’s Mon grand récit: because everything … 2005 is a table-top miniature world. One of a pair of major sculptures sharing the same title and mapping the same mysterious topography, the Govett-Brewster’s Mon grand récit: because everything’s alter ego, Mon grand récit: weep into stones… 2005 was shown at the Basel Art Fair in 2005. The two works are very similar, though the Govett-Brewster version is slightly larger and is dominated by a glossy, sprawling, white base resembling a vast glacier, whereas the same forms in Weep into stones… are suspended in space, like a huge train-set on scaffolding. Both works are composed of images of the wreckage of modern history’s mass utopias, of the twentieth century visions of crazy perfection that were shared by capitalism, fascism and communism. These visions have now disintegrated. First, this essay looks at Mon grand récit: because everything… as a work of art that represents the duration of modern history and its entropic end. It does this by translating duration into metonymic images, into images that represent the twentieth century’s failed utopias by architectural models of never-completed modernist monuments in construction: a hanging, bent wood freeway hovering above a snowy abyss; a mountainous central tower encrusted with miniature crystal models; a tiny scale model of Vladimir Tatlin’s never-constructed Monument to the Third International 1920 perched on a glacial waste. Second, the essay shows that because Lee Bul presents modern history as both personal and shared, the instructional diorama represents her quite strategic and very conscious argument against contemporary art criticism’s hermeneutics of nationality, in favour of a determinedly global perspective.
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ItemSusan Norrie( 2004)The work of Susan Norrie, which now spans more than two decades, is challenging, provocative and inspirational. As with all visionary artists, Norrie’s practice has developed and changed over time, now incorporating painting, objects, still and moving images and sound. from her paintings to her installations and video projections, Norrie’s work combines technical brilliance and extraordinary talent with an acute and restless intelligence.
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ItemImperial legacy: the politics of display in Australia( 2004)Somewhere among the countless rows of objects currently on display in the British Museum’s Enlightenment exhibition there rests a flaking bark shield. This battered, utilitarian object stands somewhat apart from the splendidly exotic artefacts that surround it. Yet beneath its unprepossessing appearance there lies an extraordinary provenance. It was taken in 1770 from the Eastern Australian seaboard by Captain Cook’s landing party during its initial encounter with the first inhabitants of the land incorporating what is now known as Sydney. The shield has been placed in a display of non-Western artefacts acquired during the period of Enlightenment discovery “through gift, trade or purchase”. In truth, however, none of these words could be used to describe its acquisition. It was hardly given, since it came into the party’s possession as a result of their shooting at a group of Eora people who left the cover of trees, apparently shouting at them to leave. Neither was it traded, unless one views a bullet fired in anger as a fair offer of exchange. Nor could it be called a purchase, unless one counts as a purchase price the blood shed by its original owner as he was hit trying to flee the invaders.