THE UNDISCOVEREDA NATIONAL FOCUS ON WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ART

Monday 20 October 2014 | The University Club of Western Australia

A SYMPOSIUM CO-PRESENTED BYARTSOURCE & THE CULTURAL PRECINCT

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

PROGRAM

8.00 REGISTRATION

9.00 WELCOME

Welcome to Country by Richard Walley

Introduction from Victoria Laurie

9.20 KEYNOTE ADDRESS Dr Ian McLean Post-national Futures

9.45 ARTIST SESSION

Trevor Vickers From The Field Exhibition at the NGV in 1968 to today: A Western Australian endeavour

Olga Cironis Horizon of your eyes

Stuart Elliott Being a scratch build artist in a flat pack world

Panel adjudicated by Louise Morrison

11.15 MORNING TEA

11.30 CURATOR SESSION

Lisa Slade Undiscovering the Canon

Carly Lane Untitled 2014

Aaron Seeto Transcultural Frontiers: perspectives in curatorial practice

Panel adjudicated by Leigh Robb

1.00 LUNCH

1.40 SECTOR SESSION

Duncan Ord In search of the undiscovered-challenges in funding the visual arts in WA

Sandy Saxon The Australia Council’s new Grants Model

Felicity Johnston Art Collective: A change in climate for the visual arts.

Seva Frangos Am I missing something?

Panel adjudicated by Sue Starcken

3.30 AFTERNOON TEA

3.45 MEDIA SESSION

Nicola Harvey How the ABC is helping to connect the film industry and visual arts community through short film and online initiatives. These initiatives go to the polemic of how, in the age of fractured audiences and budget limitations, the ABC can deeply engage with arts communities across Australia.

Ted Snell The tyranny of myopia: What do we mean when we say ‘Australian’ or ‘National’ in the context of contemporary art in Australia?

Panel adjudicated by Victoria Laurie

4.50 CLOSING ADDRESS

5.00 SUNDOWNER

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IAN McLEAN Keynote Speaker

Ian McLean is Senior Research Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Wollongong. He has published extensively on Australian art and particularly Aboriginal art within a contemporary context. His books include Arte Indigena Contemporaneo en Australien, IVAM Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, (with Erica Izett), How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art, White Aborigines Identity Politics in Australian Art, and Art of Gordon Bennett (with a chapter by Gordon Bennett). He is a former advisory board member of Third Text, and currently on the advisory boards of World Art and National Identities.

VICTORIA LAURIE Master of Ceremonies

& Media Panel Adjudicator

Victoria Laurie is an award-winning journalist. Her career began in ABC radio and TV current affairs, followed by print journalism for The Bulletin, The Australian newspaper, Weekend Magazine and other publications. She has been a Walkley Award finalist three times, is a recipient of an Equal Opportunity Media Award and numerous state awards.

LOUISE MORRISON Artist Panel Adjudicator

Louise Morrison is a West Australian artist and part-time Lecturer at Central Institute of Technology. Her previous experience as an Art Consultant and Manager of Membership Services at Artsource as well as 10 years voluntary work as a Gallery Guide at the Art Gallery of Western Australia fostered her particular interest in local practice. She is currently studying towards a Masters in Art History and Curatorial Studies and writes about local, historic and contemporary visual arts on a free-lance basis.

LEIGH ROBB Curator Panel Adjudicator

Leigh Robb is the Curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. She previously worked at Thomas Dane Gallery, London and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Leigh undertook her BA in Art History at the University of Queensland, Brisbane and her Masters in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has curated numerous solo exhibitions of Australian and international artists, edited and written for many national publications and catalogues, and regularly lectures at Curtin University and University of Western Australia, and speaks on public forums and panels about contemporary art. She was the recipient of the Japan Foundation JENESYS Creator residency in Tokyo in 2010, and was selected as the curator of OCTOPUS 12 at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, in 2012.

SUE STARCKEN Sector Panel Adjudicator

Sue Starcken has an extensive visual arts background in the state of Western Australia. Since graduating from Edith Cowan University with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts), Honours Degree in 2001, and Masters of Medieval and Early Modern Studies from the University of Western Australia, Starcken has worked as a lecturer in Art History, Critical Theory, Professional Practice and Printmaking at Swan TAFE. She continues to lecture in Cultural History and Theory at Edith Cowan University. In a number of capacities, she has written for publications and more recently she commenced her current position as Art Collection Curator for the ECU collection. A renowned printmaker, Starcken’s unique and complex etching process, which references history, memory and states of being, appears as symbolic language. She recently curated and featured in Of Spears and Pruning Hooks, 11 at Spectrum Project Space 2014.

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ARTIST PANEL

TREVOR VICKERS

Trevor Vickers is one of the most highly regarded artists currently working in Western Australia. He has been exhibiting for almost 50 years primarily in Melbourne and Perth Vickers has demonstrated a continual focus on minimal abstract painting throughout his long career. His works are meticulously crafted and concentrated on the interactions of colour and form to create optical effects. Vickers exhibited in the 1970s at the avant-garde Pinacotheca Gallery in Melbourne alongside Australia’s most significant conceptual and post-object artists. He also exhibited at the seminal ‘Field’ exhibition in 1968 at the reopening of the National Gallery of Victoria. Arguably the most important single exhibition in Australian art history, the exhibition included young artists committed to hard-edged abstraction and colour-field painting.

STUART ELLIOTT

For more than three decades Stuart Elliott has contributed significantly to the visual arts in Western Australia, as a painter, sculptor, lecturer, curator and writer. Stuart’s artworks have been inspired by the collision of industry with nature for several years. He is a prominent contemporary Western Australian artist having extensively exhibited nationally and internationally. His paintings and sculptures can be found in many public collections including the Art Gallery of WA, Sanyi Museum Taiwan ROC, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Curtin University, University of WA, Murdoch University, Edith Cowan University, City of Perth, BankWest, Holmes á Court Collection and Kerry Stokes Collection. Stuart is also well respected art academic having lectured from 1986 to 2012 at tertiary institutions for both undergraduate and post graduate programs, domestically and internationally. In 2012 he was invited to work with the Edith Cowan Art Collection as a significant part of their curatorial cadre in the Senior Facilities Officer position and has been there ever since.

OLGA CIRONIS

Olga is a well-respected and established West Australian artist, teacher and lecturer with a practice that spans over 20 years. She holds a Masters of Visual Arts from University of Sydney and has exhibited nationally and internationally, in commercial and artist run gallery spaces. Olga has worked in remote communities in Western Australian, coordinating art projects that encourage links with other art groups and communities. She has completed a number of public art works in WA and Italy and enjoys sharing her experiences and knowledge. Olga’s work is represented nationally and internationally in public and private collections.

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CURATOR PANEL

LISA SLADE

Lisa Slade is Project Curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Her recent curatorial projects include The extreme climate of Nicholas Folland, HEARTLAND: Contemporary Art from South Australia and management of the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart. She has recently been announced as curator of the 2016 Adelaide Biennial. Lisa’s career began in education and she has taught in secondary and tertiary contexts for over two decades. She currently lectures in a host of postgraduate courses (including Museum and Curatorial Studies, Indigenous Art and Colonial Australian Art) delivered by Adelaide University in collaboration with the Art Gallery of South Australia. She has written and published reviews, academic essays, catalogue entries and monographs, and is the author of the recently released 2014 Wakefield Press publication on South Australian contemporary artist Nicholas Folland.

CARLY LANE

Carly Lane is a Kalkadoon woman and an independent art curator based in Perth. Carly specialises in Aboriginal art and anthropology and has 18 years’ experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, art collections and exhibitions in Perth, as well as nationally. She has worked as a curator and researcher at a number of local, state and national institutions, including the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, The University of Western Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the National Museum and National Gallery of Australia. Carly was the inaugural curator of the Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards and curator of the second National Indigenous Art Triennial. Carly runs her own arts consultancy business – Carly Lane Art Curator, and is co-guest editor of this year’s (2014) annual special edition of Artlink Indigenous art, ‘Blackground’.

AARON SEETO

Aaron Seeto is the Director of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. He is an artist and a curator of contemporary art. His curatorial work revolves around the Asia-Pacific region and the impact and experience of migration and globalisation on contemporary art practice. As a curator he has developed significant projects with key Asian and Asian-Australian artists for a range of cultural institutions including 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney; Art Stage, Singapore, Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Campbelltown Arts Centre. In 2010 he developed the Public Art Plan for Chinatown for the City of Sydney as Chinatown Public Art Curator. 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art has built significant relationships between Australia and Asia; developing exhibitions in Australia of key Asian artists and presented Australian art in a range of Asian cities. 4A believes that contemporary visual art plays a central role in understanding the dynamic relationship between Australia and Asia.

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SECTOR PANEL

DUNCAN ORD Director General, Department of Culture and the Arts

On 1 July 2014, Duncan Ord commenced as Director General of the Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA). He was Acting Director General of the Department of Planning and formerly Deputy Director General of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, prior to joining DCA. Duncan was involved in establishing two of the State's pre-eminent performing arts companies, Black Swan and Barking Gecko. He has been a member of several Australia Council Boards and Committees and is a former Dean of the School of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and General Manager of the WA Theatre Company. Duncan has also been Chairman of both Spare Parts Puppet Theatre and Skadada Youth Circus. In 2013 he was the recipient of an Order of Australia Medal, and is also a past winner of the Churchill Fellowship.

SANDY SAXON Visual Arts Program Manager, Australia Council

Sandy has a visual arts background with a practice in sculpture and printmaking. She holds Master degrees in Fine Arts and in Arts Administration. Over the past 25 years Sandy has worked as an administrator and curator in public art galleries and exhibition touring agencies. From 2008 to 2010 she undertook an arts philanthropy mentorship with ArtSupport Australia, before moving to arts funding at the Australia Council in 2011.

FELICITY JOHNSON Director, Art Collective WA

Felicity Johnston is the Director of Art Collective WA. She completed a BA of Arts (Hons) and a MPhil at the University of Western Australia. She was previously employed as the Curator for the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at UWA, Director Johnston Gallery, Perth, Communications and Promotions Manager, National Association for the Visual Arts and Gallery Manager Australian Galleries, Sydney.

She is a past board member of FotoFreo: Fremantle Festival of Photography 2006 -2014, and the National Association for the Visual Arts 2008-2010 and is also a registered valuer for the Australian Governments Cultural Gifts Program.

Recent curatorial projects include Anne Ferran: Shadow Land, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth and Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.

SEVA FRANGOS Director, Seva Frangos Art: Indigenous and Contemporary

Seva Frangos has 30 years of experience in public art galleries and museums and has established a comprehensive professional network throughout Australia and internationally. Previously with the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Seva Frangos is now Director of Seva Frangos Art, a gallery and consultancy committed to promoting Indigenous and contemporary art and working creatively with Indigenous art centres. Recent initiatives include showcasing contemporary Chinese Art.

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MEDIA PANEL

NICOLE HARVEY Editor, ABC Arts Online

Nicola Harvey is an arts journalist, editor and producer with experience in online and TV broadcasting and magazine publishing. She is currently editor of ABC Arts Online. Over the past decade, Nicola has worked as a producer and writer in Melbourne, London and Sydney. She is a segment producer for ABC News 24’s weekly arts show The Mix, commissioning editor for ABC Arts Online, and in 2014 executive produced ABC Arts’ short-from web doc series Art X West, The Golden Age of Piracy and A Company of Soldiers. Nicola has worked on staff for frieze magazine, and has written about the visual arts for The Listener, Mindfood and Artlink. She’s also contributed essays to exhibition catalogues and wrote about the work of Australian artist Cameron Robbins for Phaiden’s global survey of contemporary drawing, Vitamin D2. Nicola joined the ABC in 2011 and works across online, mobile and TV for ABC Arts.

TED SNELL Freelance arts writer

Ted Snell AM, Cit WA was born in 1949, at Geraldton, Western Australia. He is currently Winthrop Professor and Director of the Cultural Precinct at the University of Western Australia. Over the past two decades he has contributed to the national arts agenda through his role as Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, Chair of the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools, Chair of Artbank and Chair of the Asialink Visual Arts Advisory Committee. He has published several books and has curated numerous exhibitions, many of which document the visual culture of Western Australia.

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A symposium presented by

Cover image: Trevor Vickers, Untitled, 2013 acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122cm Courtesy of Art Collective WA