Art Forums at the Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank
The Victorian College of the Arts, Southbank is holding weekly Art Forums with speakers including artists, writers and curators. See the program of speakers below. All talks are free admission and open to the public.
Venue: Art Auditorium, School of Art, Gate 4, Dodds Street, Southbank
Further enquiries: 03 9685 9400 or email Scott Miles
Free admission and all welcome
Website - http://vca.unimelb.edu.au/events/category/Public%20Talks
March 31st, 2011 12:30-1:30pm - Alex Baker ‘THINGS THAT I LIKE THAT MAKE ME WHO I AM’
Alex Baker will reflect upon the wide range of personal and cultural materials influencing his role as a curator and writer.
Alex Baker is Senior Curator, Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. Formerly Curator of Contemporary Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and associate curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (both in Philadelphia), he has organized exhibitions with artists including Robert Ryman, Ellen Harvey, Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, and Laylah Ali, among others. At the NGV, he has curated Harrell Fletcher: The Sound We Make Together (Melbourne) (2010) and Ricky Swallow: The Bricoleur (2009), among other exhibitions. He has a Ph.D. in visual anthropology from Temple University, Philadelphia.
April 7, 2021 12:30-1:30pm - Charlie Sofo ‘WANDER‘
Charlie Sofo likes to walk and makes it a daily activity. This walking brings him into an encounter with local people and things. He will talk about wandering as a strategy to make art.
Charlie Sofo has just started studying an MFA at the VCA. He makes actions, video, sculpture, books and texts. He exhibited I wander at Heide Museum of Modern Art and I wish I were smaller at Darren Knight gallery, Sydney in 2010. He is a member of the A-COOP studios in Northcote.
April 14, 2021 12:30-1:30pm - Geoff Robinson ‘FIELDWORK’
Geoff Robinson creates process determined works that involve sound mapping and duration. His practice investigates the transformation of sonic experiences into form and the charting of time through reflected light works and sound performance.
Geoff uses field recordings as a means of mapping sites and creating large-scale three-dimensional linear forms. He is interested in the transformation that occurs from exploring sites through sound, to the use of surveying and mapping to create immersive kinaesthetic installations installations. Geoff records sites that are in flux and where urban and natural environments intersect.Geoff Robinson completed a Masters of Arts (Media Arts) at Royal Melbourne Institute of Tecnology in 2003. He has exhibited extensively in Melbourne (including Heide Museum of Modern Art, Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, WestSpace, RMIT Project Space and TCB art inc). Geoff was a recipient of a Gertrude Contemporary Arts Space studio in Melbourne 2004-2006 and has received arts development grants through City of Melbourne, Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2007 Geoff travelled to Osaka, Japan for a sound based field recording project and exhibition and travelled to New York in 2008 for the Australia Council Greene Street Studio residency. Image Credit: Geoff Robinson, North. At the junction of Inwood Hill Park New York and Jokulsarlon southeast Iceland, February – May 2008, Gertrude Contemporary Arts Spaces, Melbourne 2009.
April 21st, 2011 12:30-1:30 - Elizabeth Newman ‘ART, ANALYSIS AND REGENERATION’
Elizabeth Newman will discuss her materially charged painting, installation and sculptural practice. She will also reveal how, in a ten year break from art making, she pursued a career in psychoanalysis, examining how this has run parallel to, and extended her art practice.
Elizabeth Newman’s work is represented by Neon Parc gallery in Melbourne. Her most recent exhibitions were a solo show ‘Lights On’ at Neon Parc in December last year, and an exhibition with German artist Esther Klaes, at Spazio A in Pistoia, Italy, in February 2011. Forthcoming is a collaborative exhibition with Nicki Wynnychuk at the AEAF in Adelaide in May.
May 5th, 2011 12:30-1:30pm - Katherine Huang ‘THE ARCHAEOLOGIST’
Katherine Huang will discuss how her installations of found objects and cast sculptures operate as a form of contemporary archaeology. Employing processes of searching, discovering, archiving, interpretation, analysis and display, Huang brings new understanding to relics of a contemporary age.
Katherine Huang is a Melbourne based artist working across installation, sculpture, painting and drawing. In addition to her solo exhibitions with commercial gallery Neon Parc , Huang has exhibited in a range of artist run and public galleries locally, nationally and internationally including Project Space (RMIT), Conical, the Museum of Contempory Art (Sydney), Experimental Art Space (Adelaide) and Los Angeles Art Fair. Huang has been the recipient of numerous prizes, residencies and awards including the 2008 Qantas Award, an Australia Council Studio in New York and a Gertrude Contemporary Studio Residency.
May 12th, 2011 12:30-1:30pm - Martha McDonald ‘TRACES OF ME’
Martha McDonald, an American interdisciplinary artist, will discuss how her recent, Victorian inspired narrative works featuring costumes, crafts, songs and live performance, have been presented and interpreted in Australian contemporary art spaces and museum contexts.
McDonald’s work has been produced in Berlin at Brotfabrik; in Melbourne, Australia, at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts and Monash University; in New York at P.S. 122, The Joyce SoHo, HERE Center for the Arts and Galapagos Arts Space; in San Francisco at Theatre of Yugen (Theatre Artaud); in Chicago at Links Hall; in Baltimore at the 14K Cabaret; and in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Painted Bride Art Center, The Prince Music Theater and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.
May 19th, 2011 12:30-1:30pm - Janine Burke ‘THE 80’s’
Janine Burke will take a walk down memory lane, recalling what the Australian art scene, including the VCA, was like in the 1980s.
Janine Burke is the award-winning author of sixteen books of art history, biography and fiction, including an acclaimed series about the Heide circle that includes biographies of Sunday Reed, Albert Tucker and Joy Hester. Her book, The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Art Collection, was shortlisted for 2007 NSW Premier’s award for non-fiction. This talk coincides with Janine’s exhibition at Margaret Lawrence Gallery and her book titled Personal View: Photographs 1978-1986.