ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) has announced that the recipient of the inaugural $80,000 Mordant Family VR Commission is Dr Christian Thompson, one of Australia’s leading visual artists. The commission, created in partnership with Catriona and Simon Mordant AM, the City of Melbourne and ACMI, builds on ACMI’s existing commissioning initiatives, and heralds a new era of artist support at ACMI for emerging platforms. The Mordant Family VR Commission will allow Thompsons’ practice to extend into the exciting medium of VR for the first time. Thompson is a contemporary artist whose work explores notions of identity, cultural hybridity, and history; often referring to the relationships between these concepts and the environment. Formally trained as a sculptor, Thompson’s multidisciplinary practice engages mediums such as photography, video, sculpture, performance, and sound. His work focuses on the exploration of identity, sexuality,…

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News from the University of Melbourne that art historian Professor Jennifer Milam has been appointed as the new Head of the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She will take up the position from 1 January 2018. Jennifer is currently an ARC Future Fellow and Professor of Art History and Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published articles on art, gardens and aesthetic ideas during the Enlightenment in journals such as The Art Bulletin, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Art History, Burlington Magazine, Eighteenth-Century Studies and Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Her books include studies of Rococo art and architecture, the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and a co-edited volume on women artists and patrons in eighteenth-century Europe. Her previous roles at the University of Sydney include Chair of Department of Art History and…

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