Contemporary art collections in the 21st century

1–3 September 2016 #forevernow

Contemporary art collections in the 21st century

#FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER

What are the current expectations of the collection of contemporary art as an entity that might shape, reflect or narrate histories of art, culture or place? And how do artists make and make use of these histories within collections?

Director’s Welcome

The Forever Now: Contemporary art collections in the 21st century conference brings together artists, curators, academics and commentators from Australia and abroad to examine how contemporary art collections shape our pasts and anticipate our futures. Collections traditionally constitute the basis of the museum. However, the period in which collections of contemporary art have been built is also when art museums have given increasing emphasis to constantly changing programs: to temporary exhibitions, new projects and ephemeral activities that work with a different speed and economy than the long view cultural investment of the collection. Whilst the audience-focused temporary programming emphasis continues, recent years have seen greater attention paid to the collection within museum programs. These include its visibility and interpretation on digital platforms; its use as a foundation for, or hand in glove with, temporary exhibition programming; its deployment outside the walls of the museum; or as the dynamic hinge in relationships between museums and their artist communities. We look forward to exchanging ideas and perspectives around collections with colleagues from all corners of the globe over the next three days.

ELIZABETH ANN MACGREGOR OBE Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Hossein Valamanesh, Passing Time, 2011, sculpture, single-channel digital video, colour, Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by GRANTPIRRIE Private, 2015, image courtesy and © the artist/ Licenced by Viscopy, 2016

MCA’s new Collection presentation

On September 1, the MCA launches Today Tomorrow Yesterday curated by MCA Senior Curator Natasha Bullock. This is the Museum’s first complete refresh of its permanent collection galleries since their launch in 2012 with Volume One.

Today Tomorrow Yesterday

Today Tomorrow Yesterday presents work by more than forty artists from the 1960s to the present, acknowledging their deep interest in different social, cultural and artistic histories. From contemporary interpretations of Aboriginal ancestral stories to the continuing effects of early to mid20th century avant-garde art, theatre and politics, this exhibition shows the impact of the past on the art of today. The title Today Tomorrow Yesterday is an adaptation from The Prophet, a book of 26 prose poetry essays by the Lebanese artist and philosopher Kahlil Gibran. He wrote: “…yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.” The exhibition references this interlacing of the continuum of time: both the western perspective of time as linear and the understanding of time as eternal within Aboriginal culture – where past, present and future circle as one. In particular, this exhibition symbolises the guiding principles of the MCA Collection. It is focused on contemporary Australian art and motivated by a respect for the creative process and vision of today’s artists. Including recent acquisitions and new commissions, Today Tomorrow Yesterday tells the story of the ever-evolving nature of contemporary art.

Stuart Ringholt, Untitled (Clock), 2014, Clockwork, tubular bells, world globe, stell, glass, electrics, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2014, image courtesy the artist and Milali Galelry Brisbane © the artist, photograph: Andrew Cuffs.

Conference Timetable 



THURSDAY 1 SEPTEMBER MCA Foundation Hall, Level G

6–8PM INTRODUCTION Elizabeth Ann MacGregor OBE KEYNOTE Expanding Horizons: rethinking the past through the lens of the present  — Frances Morris Moderator: Mark Ledbury



 RIDAY 2 SEPTEMBER F Veolia Lecture Theatre, Level 2

9.00 REGISTRATION & COFFEE 9.30 WELCOME TO COUNTRY 9.45 OPENING Blair French 10.00 INTRODUCTION Natasha Bullock 10.15 KEYNOTE In Good Company – Contemporary Collections, Contemporary Collecting in Australia  — Jenepher Duncan Q&A: Jason Smith 11.45 MORNING TEA 12.15 PARALLEL CASE STUDIES 1. The Regional within the International — Thomas Berghuis & Maud Page How are regional and international narratives reflected within collection strategies? What impact does this have on the development of major exhibitions? 2. An International Acquisition Program — Natasha Bullock & Sook-Kyung Lee  Two institutions taking different but intersecting lines through contemporary Australian art in the building of collections, with discussion also regarding the unique model of institutional co-acquisition.

3.  Contemporary and Colonial Collections in Dialogue  — Jacqueline Millner & Lisa Slade How are collections of colonial art being developed in the present? How do they, in dialogue with contemporary art, shape our pasts and anticipate our futures and what is the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and artists in this history. 1.15 LUNCH 2.00 PERFORMANCE  Parallel Collisions (2008/16) — Marco Fusinato Level 2 Collection Galleries 2.30 SESSION The Contemporary Collection as Historical Archive Panel: Caroline Butler-Bowdon, A.D.S. Donaldson, Michael Goldberg & Judy Watson Chair: Charles Green  What are the current expectations of the collection of contemporary art as an entity that might shape, reflect or narrate histories of art, culture or place? If contemporary collections mark out or trace histories, how? Is or can art history be written through the collection of the contemporary? 4.00 CLOSING REMARKS 5.00 END OF DAY ONE 6.00 PERFORMANCE  Preceded by a tour of the show by artist Stuart Ringholt, 6–8pm. The artist will be naked. Those who wish only to join the tour must also be naked. Adults only. (2011 ongoing)  — Stuart Ringholt Level 2 Collection Galleries, bookings essential: mca.com.au



 ATURDAY 3 SEPTEMBER S Veolia Lecture Theatre, Level 2

9.00 REGISTRATION AND COFFEE 9.30 WELCOME 9.45 LECTURE Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia — Stephen Gilchrist Q&A: Keith Munro 10.30 KEYNOTE Contemporary Art and the Historical Museum — Jasper Sharp Q&A: Rachel Kent 11.45 MORNING TEA 12.00 SESSION Curatorship and the Contemporary Collection  Panel: Natasha Conland, Tom Nicholson, Justin Paton, Judith Ryan Chair: Blair French  The surge in the development of curatorship as a professional and highly theorised practice has been largely driven in scholarship considering curatorship in terms of independent practice, and certainly filtered through the lens of temporary exhibitions and biennale-type models. So what role is the contemporary collection playing in linking developments in museology to new models of contemporary curatorship? How are we seeing (or might see) new developments in curatorship through institutional work with collections? What new curatorial strategies do contemporary collections demand? What new opportunities? 

1.30 LUNCH 2.00 PERFORMANCE Moving Collected Ambience (2014/16) — Super Critical Mass Level 2 Collection Galleries 2.45 SESSION The Ephemeral Contemporary Collection  Panel: Lisa Reihana, Stuart Ringholt & José Da Silva Chair: Edward Scheer Whereas the museum collection is traditionally considered in terms of aggregations of material objects, contemporary art is replete with the immaterial: works as digital coding, sets of instructions for reconstitution, performance events, social actions, etc. How are such practices incorporated into the contemporary collection? What challenges do they pose? 4.00 CLOSING REFLECTIONS BC Institute, Thomas Berghuis, Sook-Kyung Lee & Jason Smith

Pat Brassington, Crush, from the series You’re so Vein, 2005, pigment print, Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased 2005, image courtesy and © the artist, photograph: Jessica Maurer

Photography credit: Dr Thomas J. Berghuis, Director Museum MACAN Credit: BC Institute, This is Barbara Cleveland, 2013, Single Channel HD Video, Dur: 16:42 mins Photography credit: Museum of Contemporary Art

Keynote Presenters, Panellists & Case Study Speakers

DR. THOMAS BERGHUIS is the Director of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), which will open its doors to the public in early 2017, in Jakarta, Indonesia. Berghuis is also a Principal Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. A critically acclaimed curator and researcher of contemporary Asian art, Berghuis previously worked as The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Curator of Chinese Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2013–2015), and as a Lecturer in Asian Art at the University of Sydney (2008–2012). BC INSTITUTE is led by four Directors, Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Diana Smith and Kelly Doley. Their projects are often informed by queer and feminist methodologies, taking the form of artistic, curatorial, publishing and educational projects. BC Institute honours the work of Barbara Cleveland, a pioneering feminist performance artist working in Sydney during the 1970s until her untimely death in 1981. BC Institute’s video works are held in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Monash University Museum of Art and Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art. NATASHA BULLOCK joined the MCA team as Senior Curator in 2014. For close to ten years she held the position of Curator, Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney. She has individually and collaborativley curated more than seventy solo and/or group exhibitions and worked with a range of artists including James Angus, Tracey Emin, Marco Fusinato, Matthys Gerber, Shaun Gladwell, Ernesto Neto, Tom Nicholson, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Simryn Gill, Mike Parr and Bill Viola. She was lead curator of the AGNSW contemporary projects series for more than eight years. In 2012 Natasha co-curated Parallel Collisions: 12th Adelaide Biennale of Australian art for the Art Gallery of South Australia; in 2013 led a major reimagining of the AGNSW contemporary collections around three concepts: ideas, structures, forces; and in 2014 curated a major exhibition of the work of American artist Sol LeWitt.

JOSÉ DA SILVA is the Head of the Australian Cinémathèque at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). He works across cinema and exhibition spaces developing projects that explore the roles film, video and new media have in reconceptualising our understanding of contemporary visual culture. He was curator of the QAGOMA exhibitions David Lynch: Between Two Worlds (2015); Earth and Elsewhere (2013) and has been a contributor to curatoriums for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2006, 2009, 2012 & 2015). A.D.S. DONALDSON is an artist currently based in Sydney. In 2009 he was awarded a PhD in art history by the University of Sydney and has held more than 25 oneperson exhibitions and participated in more than 60 group exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally. A survey of his work was held at the University of Queensland Art museum in 2002. His work is represented in museums, university art galleries and in various private collections in Australia and overseas. He is currently writing a history of 20th century Australian art with Rex Butler and is a lecturer in the Painting Department at the National Art School.

Photography credit: Jennifer French AAG Toi o TAmaki Photography credit: Kris Snibbe/ Harvard Staff Photographer 2016 Photography credit: Michael Goldberg

NATASHA CONLAND is a Curator of Contemporary Art at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. She was curator of the New Zealand pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale where she curated et al.’s the fundamental practice; the CAFÉ 2 project for the Busan Biennale (2006); the SCAPE Biennial of Art and Public Space don’t misbehave! (2006). She was previously a Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa where among other exhibition and acquisition projects she was responsible for initiating a new site-specific sculpture programme (2002).

JENEPHER DUNCAN is the Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Previously she was the Curator then Director of the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) for two decades, and concurrently from 1991 to 2001, Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), South Yarra, an affiliated institution at the time. A graduate of Monash University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Museums Australia (Victoria) in 2003, and an Honorary Doctorate from Monash University in 2006. STEPHEN GILCHRIST belongs to the Yamatji people of the Inggarda language group from Western Australia’s northwest. Gilchrist is Associate Lecturer of Indigenous Art in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney. He has held curatorial appointments in the Indigenous Art Departments at the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia. He was the Australian Studies Visiting Curator at the Harvard Art Museums where he curated Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia in 2016. MICHAEL GOLDBERG is an artist, curator and academic living in Sydney since 1988. He was born in South Africa where his sculptural work through the 70s and early 80s contributed to what become known as the ‘Art of Resistance’ – a movement characterising vigorous critique of the Apartheid regime. His early solo and curatorial projects in Australia examined the country’s colonial era with site-responsive installations produced in key heritage locations, including Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens and the Australian Museum. These projects presented alternative views of dominant histories and challenged conventional museum interpretations of Australia’s past.

Photography credit: Tate

Photography credit: Joel Devereux

Photography credit: Jennifer French AAG Toi o TAmaki

DR. CAROLINE BUTLER-BOWDON is the Director of Curatorial and Public Engagement at Sydney Living Museums. Spanning 20 years her career has been dedicated to cultural leadership that connects diverse audiences to history, arts and heritage through a broad range of public engagement programs, including festivals, exhibitions and books. She is the winner of multiple awards for the books, curatorial and creative history projects she has written, produced and led that share the stories of urban life, architecture and design across the centuries. She completed the Museum Leadership Institute Program in 2012 at The Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University, California and completed her PhD on the history of apartment living in Sydney at the University of New South Wales in 2009.

DR. SOOK-KYUNG LEE is currently Senior Research Curator of Tate Research Centre: Asia and Curator of Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee at Tate, London. She was previously Exhibitions & Displays Curator at Tate Liverpool, and curated a number of exhibitions including Nam June Paik and Doug Aitken: The Source and Thresholds (as part of Liverpool Biennial 2012). Lee was Curator at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea and Lecturer at Hong-ik University in Seoul. She has also served as the Commissioner & Curator of the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

Photography credit: Mark Sherwood, QAGOMA

MAUD PAGE is Deputy Director, Collection and Exhibitions at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia. Page joined QAGOMA in 2002 and was Senior Curator, Contemporary Pacific prior to taking up her senior management role. She has been a member of the curatorium for the Gallery’s flagship exhibition series, The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) since 2002. Page has written and lectured extensively, including teaching Museum Studies at Sydney University and Hong Kong University. Her key area of research is how Indigenous and vernacular practices intertwine with contemporary art.

Photography credit: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Justin Paton with painting by Judy Millar (background)

FRANCES MORRIS has played a key role in the development of Tate, joining as a curator in 1987, becoming Head of Displays at Tate Modern (2000–2006) and then Director of Collection, International Art until April 2016 when she was appointed to her current role as Director of Tate Modern. She has continually worked to re-imagine Tate’s collection and has been instrumental in developing its international reach and its representation of women artists. Morris was jointly responsible for the initial presentation of the opening collection displays at Tate Modern in 2000, which radically transformed the way museums present the story of modern art. She has curated landmark exhibitions, many of which were largescale international collaborations, including three major retrospectives of women artists: Louise Bourgeois in 2007, Yayoi Kusama in 2012 and Agnes Martin in 2015.

Photography credit: Kallan McLeod

Photography credit: Hugo Glendinning 2016

DR. JACQUELINE MILLNER completed her studies in law, political science and visual arts, before consolidating a career as an arts writer and academic specialising in the history and theory of contemporary art. She is Associate Dean of Research at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, where she also lectures on contemporary art theory and history. Her books include Conceptual Beauty: Perspectives on Australian Contemporary Art (2010), Australian Artists in the Contemporary Museum (with Jennifer Barrett, 2014) and Fashionable Art (with Adam Geczy, 2015). She co-convenes the research cluster Contemporary Art and Feminism at the University of Sydney and is currently writing a book on Contemporary Art and Feminism with Catriona Moore.

TOM NICHOLSON is an artist who lives in Melbourne. His recent work has been shown in Frontier imaginaries, IMA and QUT Art Museum in Brisbane, 2016; in the project Antipodes at the MAA in Cambridge, UK; the 2015 Jakarta Biennial, curated by Charles Esche; Fractures: Jerusalem Show VII, 2014; Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks curated by WHW at 21er Haus in Vienna, the Beirut Art Centre, and at M HKA in Antwerp, 2013–14; in a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, 2014. He is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane, and is a Lecturer in Drawing at MADA, Monash University. JUSTIN PATON is a New Zealand writer and curator who has been Head Curator of International Art at AGNSW since 2014. At the AGNSW he led the curatorial team behind the 2014 rehang of the Asian collection and is co-curator, with Tate Britain’s Emma Chambers, of the forthcoming Nude: Art from the Tate Collection. As Senior curator at Christchurch Art Gallery from 2007–2013, he led the 2009 rehang of the permanent collection and the Gallery’s acclaimed programme of post-earthquake public art. LISA REIHANA is an artist who lives and works in Auckland. At the forefront of lens-based experimentation, Reihana has powerfully contributed to the development of time-based art in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Spanning effortlessly through film, video, photography, installation, performance, design, costume and sculptural form, Reihana is driven by a strong sense of community that informs her collaborative working methodology. Her poetically nuanced works offer an astute disruption and expansion of the colonial impulse as she interrogates gender, power, representation and the gaze.

JUDITH RYAN received a BA Honours in Fine Arts and English Literature at the University of Melbourne in 1970 and a Certificate in Education at Oxford University in 1972. She began her art museum career in 1977 at the National Gallery of Victoria where she is currently the Senior Curator of Indigenous Art. Ryan’s special interest is Indigenous Australian art of the 20th and 21st centuries — its diversity, dynamism and transformation in the face of social change. Ryan has curated about forty exhibitions of Indigenous art and has published widely in the field. JASPER SHARP is an art historian and curator. He worked at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, from 1999–2005 where he was responsible for the exhibition programme, permanent collection displays and contemporary projects both at the museum and the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He has lived in Vienna since 2006, working as a curator at ThyssenBornemisza Art Contemporary and since January 2011 as Adjunct Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. He was Commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and is the founder of Phileas, a new philanthropic initiative that supports the production and acquisition of contemporary art for public collections.

Photography credit: Dean Baletich Photography credit: Sharon Hickey

Photography credit: MCA Photography credit: Louise Allerton

STUART RINGHOLT is an artist based in Melbourne who has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, since 2003. His work takes many forms, from performance, video and sculpture to collaborative workshops, and is characterised by a resolute sense of art as a social enterprise. Personal and social themes such as fear and embarrassment are often presented through absurd situations or amateur self-help environments, including nude gallery tours, anger workshops and participatory performance works. Other works involve the transformation of the found object and popular media imagery that meaningfully interrogate and impact on the original. The first monograph on Ringholt’s work, Kraft, was co-published by Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2014.

LISA SLADE is the Assistant Director at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. In this role she overseas curatorial, public programs and learning teams and retains her own curatorial responsibilities. Slade has a strong curatorial signature — one that brings the past into dialogue with the present. In 2014, through the exhibition The extreme climate of Nicholas Folland, Slade re-framed the traditional form of the monograph or survey exhibition by jostling contemporary works of art by Folland with works from the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection. She is currently working on the forthcoming Sappers & Shrapnel, an exhibition that looks at the art made in the trenches of World War I alongside the practice of contemporary Australian artists. JUDY WATSON’s Aboriginal matrilineal family are from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. Watson co-represented Australia in the 1997 Venice Biennale, was awarded the Moët & Chandon Fellowship in 1995, the National Gallery of Victoria’s Clemenger Award in 2006 and, in the same year, the Works on Paper Award at the 23rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award. In 2015, she was announced as the recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts ‘Visual Arts Award: Artist’. Watson’s work is held in major Australian and international collections including: National Gallery of Australia; all Australian State Art Galleries; Library of Congress, Washington, USA; Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virginia, USA; as well as important private collections. In mid–2016, the Tate, London and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney jointly acquired a series of works by Watson. Watson is an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Performances from the MCA Collection

MARCO FUSINATO Parallel Collisions, 2008/16 Parallel Collisions consists of images of conflict and altered states — the face of a terrorist, images of an explosion — interpreted by a group of musicians who introduce subjectivity to each performance as they respond to the image. The collages (aka scores) are thrown to the ground after each page is interpreted, the sound and action function as a parallel collision; they lie on the floor as the residue of a past performance. Marco Fusinato is a contemporary artist and experimental musician whose multimedia work has taken the form of installation, photography, performance and recording. His work has been presented in many exhibitions including, All the World’s Futures, the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 2015. STUART RINGHOLT Preceded by a tour of the show by artist Stuart Ringholt, 6–8pm. The artist will be naked. Those who wish only to join the tour must also be naked. Adults only, 2011–ongoing In this performance Stuart Ringholt leads a guided gallery tour in which all the participants are naked. Occurring outside of museum opening hours, these nude tours give visitors the rare opportunity to (literally) remove the material barriers between artist and audience. See page 19 for artist bio.

From top: Marco Fusinato, Parallel Collisions (detail), 2008/2016, score for 2-24 performers, mixed media on paper, 24 page score, Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015, image courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne © the artist/ Licenced by Viscopy, 2016; Stuart Ringholt, Preceded by a tour of the show by artist Stuart Ringholt, 6-8pm. The artist will be naked. Those who wish only to join the tour must also be naked. Adults only (detail), 2011-ongoing, [artist talk and drinks], performance documentation, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2012, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015. Featured: Rivane Neuenschwander, Continent Cloud, 2007, image courtesy and © the artists, photograph: Christo Crocker; Super Critical Mass, (Julian Day and Luke Jaaniste), Moving Collected Ambience, 2014/16, participatory sound work, Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Performance Space, Sydney, 2015, image courtesy and © the artists

SUPER CRITICAL MASS (Julian Day & Luke Jaaniste) Moving Collected Ambience, 2014/16 Moving Collected Ambience is a participatory sound work designed to articulate the collection spaces of the museum. A group of participants from throughout the community is brought together to enact a verbally communicated score, creating a drifting field of simple vocal sounds, individually sung or in unison. The work attempts to reach a critical mass – a moment when collective voices combine to create an immersive and transformative effect. Super Critical Mass (SCM) is an ongoing participatory sound project. It cultivates temporary communities to undertake actions in public places using dispersed homogenous sound via memorised instructions. SCM is directed by Julian Day and Luke Jaaniste who have created works in New York, the UK, Europe and throughout Australia.

#FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER NOW #FOREVER

What role is the contemporary collection playing in linking developments in museology to new models of contemporary curatorship? How are we seeing (or might see) new developments in curatorship through institutional work with collections? What new curatorial strategies do contemporary collections demand?

Photography credit: Daniel Boyd Lyndell Brown and Charles Green An end to suffering (detail) 2009 oil on linen 170 x 170 cm Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2016.

Session Chairs & Moderators

DR. BLAIR FRENCH is Director, Curatorial and Digital at the MCA. He was previously Executive Director, Artspace Visual Arts Centre and has also held senior curatorial and managerial positions at Australian Centre for Photography and Performance Space. His publications include three books on Australian photography and contemporary art, as well as numerous edited artist monographs. As a curator, he has worked with a wide and diverse range of artists including Bruce Barber, Chicks on Speed, Simon Denny, Marco Fusinato, Shaun Gladwell, Ho Tzu Nyen, Rose Nolan, Peter Robinson and Francis Upritchard amongst many others. Blair holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and has lectured at the University of Waikato; the University of New South Wales; and at the University of Western Sydney.

CHARLES GREEN is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has written Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970–94 (Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995), The Third Hand: Artist Collaborations from Conceptualism to Postmodernism (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2001), and (with Anthony Gardner) Biennials, Triennials, documenta (Boston, Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). He was the Australian correspondent for Artforum for many years. As Adjunct Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, he worked as a curator on Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968–2002 (2002), world rush_4 artists (2003), 2004: Australian Visual Culture Now (ACMI/ NGVA, 2004) and 2006 Contemporary Commonwealth (ACMI/NGVA, 2006). He is also an artist who works collaboratively with Lyndell Brown since 1989; they were Australia’s Official War Artists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MARK LEDBURY is Power Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, and Director of the Power Institute. He is a scholar of European art, particularly interested in the relations between art and theatre. He is the author of books and articles on François Boucher, Jacques-Louis David, and most recently on the British artist James Northcote (James Northcote, History Painting and the Fables, New Haven and London, 2014). His current book project has the working title: An Eccentric History of History Painting. As Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney he curates a lively program of publications, talks, conferences, workshops and research projects in Sydney and internationally. ELIZABETH ANN MACGREGOR OBE has been Director of the MCA since 1999. After negotiating a new funding model to allow the MCA to flourish, she has consolidated the MCA’s position as one of Sydney’ best loved institutions, engaging audiences with living artists. The 2012 redevelopment transformed the MCA, providing spacious new galleries including an entire floor dedicated to the MCA Collection; a state-of-the-art National Centre for Creative Learning; public spaces that embrace one of the world’s most beautiful locations and a series of site-specific artists’ commissions. Her contribution to the visual arts was recognised with a string of awards including an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday honours list in 2011 and her naming as the 2016 NSW Creative Laureate.

Photography credit: Daniel Boyd Photography credit: William Yang Photography credit: Geelong Gallery

Photography credit: Daniel Boyd Photography credit: Amelia Kelly Photography credit: Daniel Boyd

RACHEL KENT is the Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. She has presented exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the USA; and speaks and publishes widely on contemporary art and curatorial practice. Recent exhibitions include the survey exhibitions Grayson Perry: My Pretty Little Art Career (2015), Annette Messager: motion / emotion (2014) and War Is Over! (if you want it): Yoko Ono (2013). Kent has worked with leading contemporary artists including Lee Bul, Olafur Eliasson, Tim Hawkinson, Runa Islam, Christian Marclay, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Parr, Ed Ruscha and Yinka Shonibare MBE. Her Yinka Shonibare MBE survey travelled to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (2008–2010); and she collaborated with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Canada on the realisation of Runa Islam’s survey, co-commissioning new work and producing a bilingual monograph (2010). She is the curator of Tatsuo Miyajima: Connect with Everything (2016).

KEITH MUNRO is Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs at the MCA. He is a descendent of the Kamilaroi (Gomeroi/ Gamilaroi/Gamilaraay) people of north-western New South Wales and south-western Queensland. His curatorial projects include Ripple Effect: Boomalli Founding Members (2012), Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, and for the MCA Being Tiwi, (2015– 2016, co-curated with Senior Curator Natasha Bullock), the internationally touring Ricky Maynard: Portrait of a Distant Land (2008–2010), Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek AO (2010) and They are Meditating: Bark Paintings from the MCA’s Arnott’s Collection in 2008. Professor EDWARD SCHEER is Director of Research in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is a founding editor of the journal Performance Paradigm and has written essays on art and aesthetics for a range of publications as well as institutions such as AGNSW, Documenta 13, the Biennale of Sydney and the Auckland Triennial. He is author, coauthor and editor of 8 books in the area of performance and new media including most recently William Yang: Stories of Love and Death (UNSW Press, 2016) with Helena Grehan.

JASON SMITH is the Director of Geelong Gallery. He was previously Curatorial Manager of Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Between 2008 and 2014, Smith was Director and CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art, where he led the acclaimed reinvigoration of the Museum’s artistic program, and prior to this he was Director of Monash Gallery of Art. Between 1997 and 2007, Smith was Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Victoria. He has individually and collaboratively curated over 40 solo, group and thematic exhibitions including major retrospectives of the works of Howard Arkley, Peter Booth, Louise Bourgeois, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Stephen Benwell and Kathy Temin.