Vadea Speakers

  Fiona Hall  Contemporary artist Fiona Hall is one of Australia’s most respected and celebrated contemporary artists. Over a prolific career beginning in the 1970s, her art has gently unraveled and boldly rewoven the fabric of contemporary life, intimately intertwining nature and culture, the local and the global, obsolete artefacts and imperilled habitats. Peering into her sardine cans or walking through her fern garden, we see, feel and think anew about the big questions of our time: sexual desire and its perils, consumerism and its discontents, colonisation and its consequences, the human species and its endangered habitat… A unique mixture of technical inventiveness, conceptual and emotional depth has brought Hall’s work public acclaim as well as many professional accolades, including the National Gallery of Victoria’s prestigious ‘Contempora 5’ award in 1997. Her work is widely represented in national, state and regional galleries throughout the country, and her exhibits are hugely popular at home and overseas. Last year’s retrospective at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art set a new record for attendances and enrolments in the gallery’s education groups. Hall’s creative investigations have long coexisted with a strong commitment to arts education. Between 1983 and 1997, she lectured in photo studies at the South Australian School of Art, and has since held fellowships and residencies at – among other places - the Canberra School of Arts and the South Australian Museum. She has also served on the Advisory Council of the Australian National University’s Centre for the Mind. Between 1999 and 2005 she held a Lunuganga Asialink Fellowship in Sri Lanka.  

  Fiona Hall – Links to Teaching Resources    Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website  FH’s artist’s profile and curriculum vitae, with links to images from all of her major exhibits.  http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/17/Fiona_Hall/profile/   *  Australian Federal Government Culture Portal  Detailed biographical information on FH.  http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/fionahall/   *  Screen Australia, Hidden Treasures  5 minute video clip showcasing FH works held at the National Gallery of Australia. Aimed at early high‐school  students, presented by Betty Churcher.  *  Artlink Magazine  Article: ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’  http://www.artlink.com.au/articles.cfm?id=2280   *  Sculpture Garden  Short essay on FH’s ‘Fern Garden’ at the NGA by Harijs Piekains.  http://nga.gov.au/sculpturegarden/fern.cfm 

 

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor  Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Over a distinguished and groundbreaking career in arts administration, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor has been impelled by a desire to bring contemporary art to the widest possible audience. This – quite literally – ‘driving passion’ was ignited early, during a formative stint as curator of the Scottish Art Council’s travelling gallery. Getting a heavy vehicle licence to accompany her MA (Hons) in Art History (Edinburgh) and her Diploma in Museum and Gallery Studies (Manchester), the young Macgregor took art to the public by the van full, from highland villages to inner-city council estates, and from hospitals to prisons. Subsequent positions included four years working with the British Arts Council, during which she helped to shift the emphasis of regional galleries towards the education of new audiences and support of living artists, and a decade as Director of the prestigious Ikon gallery, where she furthered the work of accessibility and outreach with offsite projects and touring exhibits. Appointed Director of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999, Macgregor has overseen a decadelong revolution marked by a burgeoning in that institution’s public profile and a three-fold increase in its visitor numbers. By inaugurating free entry, establishing a permanent collection and securing State government funding, Macgregor has laid the foundations for the MCA’s continuing growth. By initiating an artist employment program in conjunction with businesses in Western Sydney, and by furthering partnerships with regional galleries, she has ensured that this growth will take the Museum’s programs well beyond Australian art’s traditional inner-urban enclave. Macgregor has been awarded the Centenary Medal for services to the Australian public and contemporary art. In 2007 she won the Significant Innovation category in the Equity Trustees Not for Profit CEO awards. In 2008, she was awarded the 2008 Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Award and participated in the Prime Minister’s 20/20 Summit.

  Elizabeth Jane Macgregor – Links to Teaching Resources  MCA Site  EJM’s official biography.  http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=73  *  AGNSW, ‘Sites of Communication’ Conference  EJM’s speaker profile.  http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sites2/speakers/other/elizabeth_ann_macgregor  *  Time Out Sydney Magazine  Profile and Interview with EJM  http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/arts/profile/elizabeth‐ann‐macgregor.aspx  http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/checkout/stylecouncil/elizabeth‐ann‐macgregor.aspx  *  Sydney Morning Herald  Article on recent successes at the MCA.  http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/blues‐are‐gone‐as‐burgeoning‐museum‐gets‐back‐in‐the‐ black/2005/09/02/1125302746456.html?from=moreStories  *  ABC Television, QandA  EJM responds to audience questions on the issues of the day.  http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2281323.htm  *  ABC Radio National – Artworks Program  EJM discusses Brook Andrew’s installation, ‘Loop’.  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2009/2489746.htm

Andrew Frost  Art critic & ABC TV The Art Life presenter Art critic, journalist and broadcaster, Andrew Frost is first and foremost a gadfly, gleefully stinging the broad buttocks of a staid and snobbish Australian arts establishment. After studying and producing video art, Frost rose to notoriety in Sydney art circles in 2004, when he was outed as the culprit behind the scabrous ‘Artlife’ weblog, a forum for anonymous comment and criticism that gave a deserved shove to many of the local academy’s sacred cows. His uncompromising judgements and pithy soundbites (e.g. ‘The Archibald Prize is Sydney’s very own monument to stupidity’) hit home. The blog quickly became required reading for critics, curators and creators, and soon counted its readership in the thousands. Always quick to recognise a thoughtful iconoclast, the ABC soon invited Frost to put together a three part series surveying the current state of Australian art. He later presented two special episodes “A Year in The Art Life” and “The Art Life At The Biennale of Sydney 2008”. Alongside his continued online endeavours, Frost regularly contributes criticism in print media and contributes to local and overseas journals, including Art in Australia, Australian Art Collector, Runway and Contemporary.

 

 

  Andrew Frost – Links to Teaching Resources    ‘The Art Life’ Blog  The blog which AF co‐founded and edits:  http://www.artlife.blogspot.com/  ABC online ‐ Andrew Frost Unleashed  Three, typically provocative, essays by AF.  http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2259581.htm  Sydney Morning Herald – ‘Bad Boy Blogger Now Aunty’s Favourite’  Brief profile of AF and discussion of the ‘Art Life’ show.  http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv‐‐radio/badboy‐blogger‐now‐auntys‐favourite/2007/06/07/1181089238764.html ABCTV, ‘The Art Life’ Program Webpage  http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200706/programs/DO0612H001D12062007T220000.htm    ‘Oh Mr Cullen... what a mess!’  AF talk at the AGNSW, reflecting on the practice of his friend and contemporary, Adam Cullen.  http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/events/multimedia/andrew_frost The New Matilda, ‘All Froth and No Bubble’ AF reflects on the state of Australian culture. http://newmatilda.com/2008/12/19/all‐froth‐and‐no‐bubble   

Gary Sangster  Lecturer, School of Art History & Education, COFA UNSW Gary Sangster is an art historian, curator, writer and museum director who has organized over 100 museum exhibitions in Australia and overseas, all reflecting the key concerns of his career: collaborative endeavour, artistic diversity and audience access. At the broadest level, Sangster’s curatorial intention is to reveal the true value of new cultural experience and exchange for individuals and societies. Sangster’s commitment to these principles has placed him at the cutting edge of inclusive and culturallypluralist movements in contemporary art, embodied by such landmark collaborative achievements as 1985’s contemporary urban Aboriginal project, Two Worlds Collide, and SNAPSHOT, 2000—the largest exhibition ever produced in North America, including more than 1,500 artists. In 2001, he curated Judith Barry's Grand Prize–winning U.S. exhibition at the 8th International Biennale, Cairo, Egypt, in 2001. After commencing his career in Sydney, with appointments in art history, film and museum studies, Sangster was based in the United States from 1990. This American sojourn included periods serving as a curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, executive director of the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore and Dean of the Art Institute of Boston. Before returning to Australia to take up a lectureship at the College of Fine Arts, Sangster was Executive Director of the Headlands Center for the Arts in California, an artists-in-residency program in which artists worked in an environment of interdisciplinary exchange and peer-to-peer learning.

 

Gary Sangster – Links to Teaching Resources  California College of the Arts   Profile of GS at the   http://www.cca.edu/academics/faculty/gsangster  *  Baltimore Contemporary Museum   Describes the ‘Snapshot’ photography exhibit.  http://www.contemporary.org/past_2000_01.html  *  Cleveland Art  Describes the ‘Urban Evidence’ exhibit, Cleveland, 1996.  http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibit/urban/index.html  Frank Prattle ‐ Gary Sangster Interview  American radio interview with GS on his work at the Headlands Centre and broader questions of the value placed on  art and culture in contemporary society.   http://frankprattle.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/gary‐sangster‐and‐ken‐foster‐january‐24th‐2008/                   

 

Ben Quilty and Lisa Slade  Lisa Slade is a Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the University of Newcastle, and a curatorial consultant to Newcastle Region Art Gallery. She was part of the team who created the very successful ‘MOVE – Video Art in Schools’ film series for the Department of Education and Training. Her academic research interests include the cultural history of ‘curiosity cabinets’. Slade curated the first comprehensive survey of Ben Quilty’s paintings, entitled ‘Ben Quilty Live!’, now showing at the University of Queensland, and soon to tour regional galleries around the country. An artist known for his brash style and vigorous use of paint, Ben Quilty established his reputation in 2002, when he was awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. Since then, he has since been represented in over 15 solo and many more group exhibitions in Australia and overseas. His work has been represented in the Archibald prize several times. This year’s contribution, “There But For The Grace Of God Go I No. 2” – a portrait of Jimmy Barnes - won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. Over the course of his career, Quilty’s work has often returned to certain key concerns, particularly the codes of Australian masculinity and the iconography of the ‘bloke’. Inspired by an essay on traumatized manhood in indigenous society, Quilty recently curated an exhibition entitled ‘On Rage’, currently showing at the Jan Murphy Gallery.                      

 

Ben Quilty and Lisa Slade­ Links to Teaching Resources    Ben Quilty‐  artists website   Curriculum vitae, images and links to several essays on the artist  http://www.benquilty.com/home.html    ‘Mirror images of male rage’ from The Australian 21/5/09  B Q on feminism and art by men about men  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25512912‐5013571,00.html    Quilty  article from The Australian, 1/5/09  http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25411890‐5013571,00.html    Hot seat: Ben Quilty, SMH profile, 2007  http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/the‐hot‐seat‐ben‐quilty/2007/03/16/1173722723863.html    Jan Murphy Gallery website  B Q’s artist’s profile and curriculum vitae and links to works  http://www.janmurphygallery.com.au/artists.php?aid=22    Ben Quilty Live! Curated by Lisa Slade  General information about the touring exhibition, BQ and LS  http://www.uq.edu.au/maynecentre/e‐news/UQArtMuseumE‐news9.html    Media Kit 

http://www.uq.edu.au/maynecentre/docs/BenQuiltyLive_MEDIA%20KIT.doc    Ben Quilty Live! Catalogue with essays by Lisa Slade, Jacqueline Millner, Don Walker and Clare Lewis.  https://www.qag.qld.gov.au/secure/gallery_store?cid=30&pid=1811                                                   

 

Kerry Thomas  Senior Lecturer, School of Art History and Art Education, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales 


Dr Kerry Thomas has had a distinguished career as an art educator and been a passionate advocate for art education for over thirty years. She has been an art teacher, acting head teacher, Regional Visual Arts Consultant K-12 (Department of Education), Curriculum Officer for Visual Arts and Inspector, Creative Arts (NSW Board of Studies). In these roles she has made a highly significant contribution to the development of the Visual Arts syllabuses and support documents, examination specifications and marking standards which have, in turn, shaped our thinking and the generative possibilities offered to students through our programming and assessment. Kerry has also held positions that include Chair of the Visual Arts Syllabus Committee, Chair of the HSC Visual Arts Examination Committee, Supervisor of HSC Visual Arts Practical Marking, Assistant Supervisor of HSC Written Marking, a member of the ARTEXPRESS management committee and represented NSW in the early-mid 1990s in discussions about the then National Curriculum. Since 2002 Kerry has turned her attention to teaching prospective art and design teachers, artists and designers in the university sector at COFA. Her recently completed PhD thesis is concerned with a sociology of creativity in art education. In this study she has researched the proposition that in the making of art, creative origination occurs as a function of the social reasoning that takes place in the pedagogical exchanges between art teachers and their students. Kerry is the VADEA Vice-President State/National Issues and Special Projects.

             

  Kerry Thomas­ Links to Teaching Resources    Staff Profile at COFA  http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/staff/profiles/kerrythomas/  *  2007, PESA Conference paper ‘Can Creativity be taught or learned?’  http://www.pesa.org.au/html/documents/2007‐papers/Thomas,%20K.pdf  *  ACUADS 2006 Conference paper ‘Thinking the Future: Art, Design and Creativity’  Creativity  as  a  Misrecognised  Investment  in  the  Transactions  Between  Art  Students  and  Their  Art  Teachers  in  the  Final Years of Schooling, Kerry Thomas http://www.acuads.com.au/conf2006/papers_refereed/thomas‐k.pdf