The natural history of media: aesthetics, nature and communications technology, from telegraphy to Google Earth. This project will show how people have, since the nineteenth century, observed the Earth and experienced nature through media, and how popular communications technologies have been joined with scientific instruments to help us understand changing ecological realities.
Towards an integrated evaluation framework for intrinsic and instrumental benefits of community-based arts. Australia is recognised as a world leader in community-based arts, in which artists and communities collaborate to identify and effect key local issues. Increasingly, these community-based arts projects involve funding from non-arts agencies; for example from the health, justice or urban development sectors. However, existing methods of describing and evaluating their success are generally ....Towards an integrated evaluation framework for intrinsic and instrumental benefits of community-based arts. Australia is recognised as a world leader in community-based arts, in which artists and communities collaborate to identify and effect key local issues. Increasingly, these community-based arts projects involve funding from non-arts agencies; for example from the health, justice or urban development sectors. However, existing methods of describing and evaluating their success are generally ineffective. This research will develop more holistic modes of evaluation, offering benefits to the participants, artists and funders of community-based arts and provide support towards further cross-sector collaborations across all public policy areas, further strengthening Australia's reputation as a leader in fostering active and culturally rich communities.Read moreRead less
The Asian Modern. Australia needs to understand Asia, and in particular the cultures of modern Asian states. Art is a vital part of the expression of those cultures, and we will know these better in our region for seeing how their modern art is an intrinsically self-generated set of cultural forms. The project will reveal what is modern in Asian art by making comparisons across national boundaries and with representative examples of Australian modern art. Through this process, we will gain a dee ....The Asian Modern. Australia needs to understand Asia, and in particular the cultures of modern Asian states. Art is a vital part of the expression of those cultures, and we will know these better in our region for seeing how their modern art is an intrinsically self-generated set of cultural forms. The project will reveal what is modern in Asian art by making comparisons across national boundaries and with representative examples of Australian modern art. Through this process, we will gain a deeper understanding of where Australia fits in the region. The project will produce a comparative theoretical framework that will be capable of application beyond Asia and Australia.Read moreRead less
Curating Cities: the social and ecological potential of public art practice. This project researches the contribution of public art to eco-sustainable development, focusing on world’s best practice and potential benefits to Sydney and cities in general. It seeks to establish how the arts can promote environmentally beneficial behaviour change and the development of green infrastructure.
A Playful Aesthetic: Reinterpreting Rococo visual culture by studying the serious pursuits of its themes, forms and processes of interactive engagement. My aim is to produce a new understanding of the role of amusement within the visual culture of eighteenth-century Europe. This will be the first comprehensive study to reconnect the diverting forms of Rococo art, architecture and garden design with the aesthetic theories of the period. The project will provide original critical perspectives on t ....A Playful Aesthetic: Reinterpreting Rococo visual culture by studying the serious pursuits of its themes, forms and processes of interactive engagement. My aim is to produce a new understanding of the role of amusement within the visual culture of eighteenth-century Europe. This will be the first comprehensive study to reconnect the diverting forms of Rococo art, architecture and garden design with the aesthetic theories of the period. The project will provide original critical perspectives on the play of forms and emblems in western art. It will also offer an innovative model for recovering processes of reception to indicate how visual experiences contribute to the production of culture.Read moreRead less
Practical Aesthetics: A Study in Understanding Real Events through Contemporary Art. This project advances the concept of practical aesthetics to demonstrate how art is of direct benefit to both the academic and wider community, furnishing concrete techniques that enable us to apprehend and understand key social and political events. It engenders an exhibition, public symposia, a workshop with student/international participation, and a book/articles, presenting Australian art in an internationa ....Practical Aesthetics: A Study in Understanding Real Events through Contemporary Art. This project advances the concept of practical aesthetics to demonstrate how art is of direct benefit to both the academic and wider community, furnishing concrete techniques that enable us to apprehend and understand key social and political events. It engenders an exhibition, public symposia, a workshop with student/international participation, and a book/articles, presenting Australian art in an international framework. The project extends the discipline base of art history, promoting and facilitating the use of art in other disciplines and in debates on events relating to issues of national importance (including border control, Reconciliation, and environmental disaster).
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The role of recent international exhibitions in creating a new 'Asian Art'. The project will examine the reasons for the advent in the 1990s of many new international Biennales and Trienales in the Asia-Pacific region at Brisbane, Kwangju, Fukuoka, Shanghai, and Yokohama, alongside slightly older ones at Delhi and Sydney. It will investigate what role these played in the creation of a new 'Asian Art' by looking at the cycling of art works and artists between the domestic and international levels ....The role of recent international exhibitions in creating a new 'Asian Art'. The project will examine the reasons for the advent in the 1990s of many new international Biennales and Trienales in the Asia-Pacific region at Brisbane, Kwangju, Fukuoka, Shanghai, and Yokohama, alongside slightly older ones at Delhi and Sydney. It will investigate what role these played in the creation of a new 'Asian Art' by looking at the cycling of art works and artists between the domestic and international levels, between these new exhibition sites and older ones like Venice, São Paolo, and Kassel, and at the role of local, international and transnational curators as mediators in these processes.Read moreRead less
In Public / In Focus: Photography, Testimony and the Public Sphere. Photography plays an important but little understood role in the public sphere. Photographs invite viewers to identify with stories, events and others, and the ease with which photographs circulate in print and online makes them ideal for fostering discourse and debate. However, the increasing focus on testimony and witness in contemporary culture has recently altered the way that photography operates in public and raised some s ....In Public / In Focus: Photography, Testimony and the Public Sphere. Photography plays an important but little understood role in the public sphere. Photographs invite viewers to identify with stories, events and others, and the ease with which photographs circulate in print and online makes them ideal for fostering discourse and debate. However, the increasing focus on testimony and witness in contemporary culture has recently altered the way that photography operates in public and raised some significant problems for photography historians regarding the representation of events, others and the past. This project will respond to these problems, and produce a new understanding of the historical, social, cultural and political links between photography and the public sphere today.Read moreRead less
A Baroque Archbishop in colonial Australia: James Goold (1812-1886). This project aims to investigate the cultural vision of the first Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, James Goold (1812-1886), whose architectural patronage changed Melbourne. An Irishman educated in Italy, Goold was a passionate collector and missionary bishop. He imported a library and late Italian Baroque paintings to convey the intensity of European religious experience. When Goold was appointed to Melbourne, it was a provinc ....A Baroque Archbishop in colonial Australia: James Goold (1812-1886). This project aims to investigate the cultural vision of the first Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, James Goold (1812-1886), whose architectural patronage changed Melbourne. An Irishman educated in Italy, Goold was a passionate collector and missionary bishop. He imported a library and late Italian Baroque paintings to convey the intensity of European religious experience. When Goold was appointed to Melbourne, it was a provincial town, but the discovery of gold and the commissioning of St Patrick's Cathedral made Melbourne an international metropolis. The project will examine Goold’s collection and communicate the results through an exhibition and conference. The research may change our understanding of the narratives of Colonial Australia.Read moreRead less
Regenerating the Body: Modern Art, Neo-Darwinism and the Fitness Imperative. Drawing upon histories of art, popular culture, medicine, science and sport, this project proposes that a reconceptualization and reimaging of the human body occurred in Western art and culture, from the end of the nineteenth century, through fitness becoming a Neo-Darwinist imperative. By demonstrating how regeneration facilitated the normalization and 'subjectification? of the body for procreative sexuality, technol ....Regenerating the Body: Modern Art, Neo-Darwinism and the Fitness Imperative. Drawing upon histories of art, popular culture, medicine, science and sport, this project proposes that a reconceptualization and reimaging of the human body occurred in Western art and culture, from the end of the nineteenth century, through fitness becoming a Neo-Darwinist imperative. By demonstrating how regeneration facilitated the normalization and 'subjectification? of the body for procreative sexuality, technologized industry and modern warfare, it substantially revises Michel Foucault's ?biopolitical? theories. In identifying how beauty became inscribed upon the regenerated body and abjection upon the degenerate ?other?, it reveals that the quest for biogenetics emerged long before it became a reality in Nazi Germany.Read moreRead less