BROADSHEET@40: THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEMPORARY—UN CERTAIN REGARD

Complementary to Broadsheet 40.2, the symposium BROADSHEET@40: THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEMPORARY—UN CERTAIN REGARD will look at contemporary Australian art and culture, and its global context especially its relation to our neighbouring region of Asia—the symposium's point of reference being OCTOBER magazine's presentation of the question below by Hal Foster, regarding 'The Contemporary' in issue 130.

The category of "contemporary art" is not a new one. What is new is the sense that, in its very heterogeneity, much present practice seems to float free of historical determination, conceptual definition, and critical judgment. Such paradigms as "the neo-avant-garde" and "postmodernism," which once oriented some art and theory, have run into the sand, and, arguably, no models of much explanatory reach or intellectual force have risen in their stead. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, "contemporary art" has become an institutional object in its own right: in the academic world there are professorships and programs, and in the museum world departments and institutions, all devoted to the subject, and most tend to treat it as apart not only from prewar practice but from most postwar practice as well. Is this floating-free real or imagined? A merely local perception? A simple effect of the end-of-grand-narratives? If it is real, how can we specify some of its principal causes, that is, beyond general reference to "the market" and "globalization"? Or is it indeed a direct outcome of a neoliberal economy, one that, moreover, is now in crisis?

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS ARE:

TONY GODFREY Head of Research Sotheby's Institute of Art, Singapore; art historian and critic (UK)

 

LEE WENG CHOY Director, Projects, Research & Publications, Osage Art Foundation; art critic (Singapore)

 

ANTHONY GARDNER Andrew W Mellon Foundation/Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (Melbourne/UK)

ADELE TAN Curator, The National Art Gallery, Singapore; PhD History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London (Singapore)

JULIANA ENGBERG Artistic Director, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne)

ADAM GECZY Senior Lecturer, Sculpture, Performance/Installation/Theoretical Enquiry, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney; artist, art critic and author (Sydney)

JUDE ADAMS Lecturer, Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, School of Art, Architecture and Design, University SA (Adelaide)

BRAD BUCKLEY Professor of Contemporary Art and Culture/Associate Dean (Research), Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney; artist and author (Sydney)

JOHN CONOMOS Associate Professor Film & Digital Art, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney; artist, art critic and author (Sydney)

 

LARISSA HJORTH (Melbourne) ARC research fellow, artist, writer and Lecturer Media Cultures/Narrative and Communication in the Games Programs, RMIT Intersections/social media, art+intimate publics

For further information regarding attendance, registration, bookings please contact: Fiona Scott, admin(at)cacsa.org.au