Category: Events

Conferences, symposia, talks, walks and other art events in Melbourne and further afield.

Terry Lane on Vanishing Sculptures: Australian Open Garden Scheme

Australia’s Open Garden Scheme Terry Lane on ‘The Vanishing Sculptures’ NGV International, Melbourne Wednesday 21 April 2021 Melbourne’s nineteenth-century fathers enriched the city’s gardens and art gallery with copies of classical and neoclassical sculptures. Just what were these statues and why were they removed from public view? Foremost authority on Australian art of the era, respected author and former senior curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, the inimitable, charming and entertaining Terence Lane will give an illustrated lecture which will reveal some at times surprising answers. Following the lecture, the Gallery’s sculpture garden is well worth a visit to view significant examples of modern public sculpture. Australia’s Open Garden Scheme is very grateful to the National Gallery of Victoria for its support of this event. Tickets $24 including morning tea. Wed 21 April 2010, 10.30am. Numbers are strictly limited…

New Perspectives on Cubism & Australian Art

New Perspectives on Cubism & Australian Art A forum, co-presented by Heide Museum of Modern Art and the University of Melbourne, to critically discuss the exhibition Cubism & Australian Art. Time: Monday 29 March 2010, 5:30pm – 8pm Cost: FREE (discounted exhibition admission available when booking) Venue: Laby Theatre, David Caro Building, University of Melbourne Bookings: 9850 1500 PDF flyer Speakers · Associate Professor Rex Butler, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland · Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, University of Sydney Art Gallery and Art Collection · Dr Anthony White, Lecturer, School of Culture & Communication, University of Melbourne · Sue Cramer and Lesley Harding, Curators, Cubism & Australian Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art Chaired by Associate Professor Alison Inglis, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Sue Cramer and Lesley Harding -…

Fresh Voices at the NGV – Dosso Dossi’s ‘Lucrezia Borgia’

Jenni Walker (Graduate Student in the Faculty of the VCA and Music, The University of Melbourne) will talk about issues of attribution and recent discoveries relating to Dosso Dossi’s portrait Lucrezia Borgia, Ducchess of Ferrara, c. 1518. All Welcome Cost: Free. Date: Friday 26th March, 12:30pm Venue: NGV International – meet at Information Desk, Ground Level, NGV International, 180 St Kilda Rd.

Lecture and Seminar on ‘Reversed Painting’ with Professor Richard Read

Richard Read Professor of Art History at the University of Western Australia LECTURE: Reversed Painting and the Conflict between Commercial and Academic Values in Nineteenth-Century London and Paris This lecture examines how the strange, complex pictorial motif of the reversed painting was used in paintings representing art galleries and academic juries to adjudicate the conflict between academic and commercial values at a time when newly professionalized commercial galleries sought to wrest cultural authority and financial power from academies in both London and Paris. SEMINAR: The Reversed Painting in Colonial Art The lecture is followed by a seminar in which Richard Read will lead the discussion. This will explore the use of the reflexive pictorial motif of the reversed canvas in colonial and decolonized art to register synchronic differences between cultures where the representation of skin colour, pioneer technologies, and contrasting…

Harrell Fletcher – Towards a tender society of thoughtful questions and answers

Harrell Fletcher – Towards a tender society of thoughtful questions and answers SATURDAY 20 MARCH, 12:30PM Clemenger BBDO auditorium NGV International 180 St Kilda Rd FREE Harrell Fletcher (b. 1967, lives and works in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.) creates art through collaboration and participation often with those outside the parameters of the art world. From installing a museum focusing on local peoples’ lives in a northern California shopping mall to working with an eight-year-old boy as the principle decision-maker for a work of public art created for a park in Brittany, France, Fletcher’s art is really all about you, rather than all about him. Fletcher is developing a project for the NGV that opens this September. “People often ask how I’m able to entice random strangers into working with me. The answer is that I appear to actually be interested in the…

Launch of ‘Europe and Australia’ MAJ nos. 11 and 12 edited by David R. Marshall

‘Europe and Australia’ (MAJ nos. 11 and 12) edited by David R. Marshall. This volume has a focus on ‘Europe and Australia’ and includes a diverse range of articles from both Australian and international scholars including Ruth Pullin, Caroline Jordan, Veronica Filmer, Mark Stocker, Katti Williams, David Maskill, Simon Pierse, Richard Read and Alex Baker. Time: 5:30pm for a 6pm launch, Thursday 25th March, 2010. Venue: Courtyard of the Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne (Parkville). For a contents list and a sneak peak inside please see the MAJ page on this website. The Melbourne Art Journal is published by the Fine Arts Network (please note it is now published Daytopia Press, see the MAJ page on this website.)

Expressions of interest for opportunity as emaj Sub-Editor issue 5, 2010

Applications now open www.melbourneartjournal.unimelb.edu.au/E-MAJ Masters and Art History PhD candidates are encouraged to apply Deadline: 15 April 2021 emaj (electronic Melbourne art journal) is the only online, refereed art history journal published in Australia. emaj aims to provide an international forum for the publication of original academic research in all areas and periods of art history. emaj welcomes monographic articles about specific artists or art collectives as well as thematic or theoretical analyses on aspects of art history. emaj is published annually by the Fine Arts Network and is edited by art history graduates and post-graduates from the University of Melbourne. Our aim for the position of Sub-Editor is to provide an emerging editor / art historian with the opportunity to expand their editorial skills and professional development in the production of a high quality, online, academic publication. The Sub-Editor…

Dr Michael Brand – ‘Curating for the Common Good’

Dr Michael Brand, Director J. Paul Getty Museum 2005-2010, Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Curating for the Common Good Friday 12 March, 2010, 5.30-6.45 pm, Elisabeth Murdoch Lecture Theatre, University of Melbourne, Parkville. Curatorship straddles the middle ground between art collections placed on display for the public good and the discipline of art history that provides most of the tools for investigating the ideas and ideals that those works of art embody. Drawing upon experience as a curator in Australia and as a museum director in the United States, this lecture will look at issues confronting the practice of curatorship on both sides of the Pacific. Dr Brand’s lecture is the keynote address for the symposium, Interrogating Art Curatorship in Australia, which is being held on 13-14 March to celebrate twenty years of teaching art curatorship at the University of Melbourne.…

Symposium – Interrogating Art Curatorship in Australia (University of Melbourne, Parkville)

An international conference to be held at the University of Melbourne on 12 (evening), 13 and 14 March 2010, interrogating the practice of art curatorship in Australia now, and in the recent past. The program is conceived in celebration of twenty years of art curatorship at the University of Melbourne. It has been organized in conjunction with the launch of the initiative to establish the Australian Institute of Art History at the University of Melbourne. Keynote speaker Michael Brand, Director, J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005-2010 Miegunyah Visiting Fellow, 2010. Symposium speakers include: Anthony Bond; Joanna Bosse; Jane Clark; Alison Carroll; Rebecca Coates; Charlotte Day; Max Delany; David Elliott; Juliana Engberg; Stephen Gilchrist; Alexi Glass-Kantor; Charles Green; Alison Inglis; Jeff Kahn; Rachel Kent; Frances Lindsay; Ruth McDougall; Kyla McFarlane; Christopher Marshall; Hannah Matthews; Karen Quinlan; Patrick Pound; Jason Smith; Daniel Thomas…

‘Garters and Petticoats’: Winterhalter’s 1843 Portraits of Victoria and Albert

The Early Modern Visual Culture Seminar returns for 2010. Eugene Barilo von Reisberg ‘Garters and Petticoats’: Winterhalter’s 1843 Portraits of Victoria and Albert What does official royal iconography tell us? What messages does it communicate about the sitters – and from the sitters? This paper deconstructs two official portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) in 1843. It outlines the complex semantic layering within this pair of British royal portraits, and explores in particular the emphasis on Prince Albert’s newly-acquired ‘Englishness’ and the notion of an iconographic ‘gender reversal’ within the context of traditional marital pendants. March 8 2010 6.30pm Room 150 Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Parkville Campus All Welcome Please RSVP Mark Shepheard (shepm@unimelb.edu.au) if you plan to join us for dinner in Lygon Street afterwards. For further details on Eugene’s research on Winterhalter please visit his website…

Anthony d’Offay talk at NGV International

Anthony d’Offay is here in Melbourne in association with the forthcoming Ron Mueck exhibition (22 January – 18 April 2010, NGV) and will present on the ARTIST ROOMS project. For more than 40 years Anthony d’Offay has been one of the world’s leading art dealers and is recognized as one of Britain’s most generous philanthropists.  He began dealing in contemporary art in the late 1960s and moved his ground breaking gallery into its Dering Street premises in 1969. ARTIST ROOMS is a new collection of international contemporary art which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift has been made by Anthony d’Offay, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS will be…

Launch of emaj issue 4, 2009

The emaj editors invite you all to join us to celebrate the launch of emaj issue 4. Launch of emaj issue 4, 2009 Drinks in the courtyard, Elisabeth Murdoch Building University of Melbourne, Parkville Tuesday December 15, 6-8pm All welcome! Please join us for drinks to celebrate the launch of our 2009 edition! emaj (electronic Melbourne art journal) is the only online, refereed art history journal published in Australia. Founded in 2005, emaj aims to provide an international forum for the publication of original academic research by emerging and established scholars in all areas and periods of art history. All Welcome. If you are on Facebook you can see the event here and to be informed of future issues and calls for papers become a fan of emaj here. www.melbourneartjournal.unimelb.edu/E-MAJ

Stephen Mead – Bohemianism in colonial Melbourne: a study of four artists’ clubs

Stephen Mead Bohemianism in colonial Melbourne: a study of four artists’ clubs This paper examines the development of a Bohemian culture in colonial Melbourne, focussing on four artists’ clubs: The Buonarotti Club (1883-87), Stray Leaves (1889-92), The Cannibal Club (1893-97) and The Ishmael Club (1898-1901). It investigates the role of the writer Marcus Clarke in introducing Parisian and London models of Bohemianism to Melbourne between 1865-1880.  It will be argued that these clubs played a more significant function in the shaping of professional artistic life during this period than has previously been acknowledged. Monday December 14th, 2009 Room 148, Elizabeth Murdoch Building, Parkville Campus 6:30-7pm EVCS Christmas Drinks. Paper from 7pm. Dinner afterwards. ALL WELCOME. Please RSVP for dinner to Mark Shepheard, shepm@unimelb.edu.au

Amelia Douglas ‘Pierre Huyghe’ – FAN postdoctoral lecture.

Amelia Douglas Recipient of the 2009 Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in the PhD, University of Melbourne Pierre Huyghe and the Association of Freed Time What is at stake in the making and recording of history, and what does it mean for a contemporary artist to work as an historiographer? The contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe is well-known for his multi-faceted works that operate in the gaps between history and story. In this lecture, Huyghe’s practice is shown to facilitate a new model of contemporary history. History as a discursive concept is pliable; its meaning shifts depending on contexts. In presenting an historiographic reading of Huyghe’s practice, this lecture reflects upon how the coalescence of story and history may be a key factor in pulling together the diverse strands of Australian and international art histories. Pierre Huyghe is one of the most significant artists of the 21st century. His work –…

Margaret Manion Lecture 2009

Sophie Matthiesson Curator, International Art, National Gallery of Victoria Captive Markets: Artists in Prison in the French Revolution Hundreds of artists found themselves in prison during the French Revolution. While confined surprising numbers resumed painting, sculpting, drawing and even engraving. Few prisons were without some level or artistic production and exchange. Based on unpublished research of French prison archives and prison-made works of art, this lecture addresses some basic questions. Who were the artists, and why were they imprisoned? What did they make and for whom? Using select case studies, this talk will propose some basic categories and functions of the prison-made object and present a model for its interpretation. It will also consider some of the wider implications of this curious and little-known area of cultural production for our understanding of the political prison in France in the period…