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
6–8PMINTRODUCTION
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
9.45OPENING
Blair French
10.00INTRODUCTION
Natasha Bullock
10.15KEYNOTE
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
2.00PERFORMANCE
Parallel Collisions (2008/16)
— Marco Fusinato
Level 2 Collection Galleries
2.30SESSION
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
6.00PERFORMANCE
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
9.30WELCOME
9.45LECTURE
Everywhen: The Eternal Present
in Indigenous Art from Australia
— Stephen Gilchrist
Q&A: Keith Munro
10.30KEYNOTE
Contemporary Art and
the Historical Museum
— Jasper Sharp
Q&A: Rachel Kent
11.45 MORNING TEA
12.00SESSION
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?
1.30LUNCH
2.00 PERFORMANCE
Moving Collected Ambience
(2014/16)
— Super Critical Mass
Level 2 Collection Galleries
2.45SESSION
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
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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.