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2004 Achievements and Forthcoming Highlights in 2005

Article released: Wednesday, 09 February, 2005

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Art History and Theory are celebrating a 2004 year crammed with intellectual and artistic achievements while concurrently looking forward to future successes in 2005.

Among the many highlights of 2004 were Visiting Professor Vivian Johnson and staff members Joanna Mendelssohn, Fay Brauer, and Diane Loshe, and grant research assistant Susie Walsh-Weirman's successful ARC LIEF grant application. This substantial one-year funding will be used to set up infrastructure, equipment and facilities to develop the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online (DDAO). Diane Loshe was also the recipient of a Darling Foundation Grant for the co-ordination of an exhibition and residency for East Timorese art students from Arte Moris. This was a highly successful first-stage of a continuing exchange program between COFA and various cultural institutions in East Timor. Also sharing funding success in 2004 is staff member Felicity Fenner, who received Australia Council support to research the curatorial strategies of major international exhibitions.

Staff publications in 2004 include Peter McNeil's essay "The Appearance of Enlightenment: Refashioning the Elites" published in Routledge's landmark anthology The Enlightenment World. The fruits of Jill Bennett's ARC funded research will be published in early 2005 in the book Empathetic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art published by Stanford University Press.

A number of staff presented papers at international conferences in 2004. Susan Best and Toni Ross presented material based on ARC funded research at the conference (Re)Discovering Aesthetics, at University College, Cork, Ireland. Fay Brauer, also an ARC Discovery Grant recipient, presented a paper entitled "Sadism, Surveillance and the New Sciences: Amar's Moteur Humain and Duchamp's Mechamorphism" at the third European Conference of the Society for Literature and Science. The conference was held at the Universite Paris 8 and Cite Internationale Universitaire in Paris.

Art History and Theory postgraduate students have also been extremely productive during 2004. Uta Daur presented findings from her research into Tracey Moffatt's art at the 9th Biennale Conference of the Association of Australian Studies, Hamburg University, Germany. Natalya Hughes exhibited art works in two national group exhibitions in Melbourne and Canberra, and a solo exhibition at the Bellas Milani Gallery in Brisbane. Uros Cvoro presented two conference papers and was the recipient of a Cofa Postgraduate Research grant and a University of Melbourne conference attendance grant. Susan Ballard contributed "Time Based Art: An Introduction" to a resource kit for teachers, and presented a conference paper at This is Not Art, at the University of Newcastle. Bachelor of Art Theory Honours student, Karen Hammerschlag gave a paper: "The Beast Within: Male Fantasy in the art of Gustave Moreau," at the annual Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference hosted by University of Auckland in December 2004.

In 2005, the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, COFA, in conjunction with the Art Gallery of New South Wales will be hosting Transforming Aesthetics, a conference that explores the response of aesthetic theory to new forms of art and exhibition practice that have emerged in response to globalization and post-colonialism. To be held on July 8-9, 2005 the conference will feature international keynote speakers Nicolas Bourriaud and Ernst Van Alphen. In March 2005 Toni Ross will represent SAHT at a QUT/IMA Creatives Industries Symposium: Relational Aesthetics, a one day event that debates the theory of contemporary art of the 1990s developed in Nicholas Bourriaud's recent publication Relational Aesthetics. This will be held at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane on 12th March, 2005.

2005 will also see Karen Greenhalgh from the University of Western Sydney take up the inaugural COFA(UNSW)/Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre Scholarship for Arts Administration. This scholarship enables a graduating University of Western Sydney student to study full-time in the Masters of Art Administration program in SAHT and undertake an extended paid internship at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.