Perspectives
Perspectives: shaping the world through visual culture.
Perspectives brings leading international artists, makers and thinkers to Adelaide for an annual series of thought-provoking lectures.
Challenging, innovative and forward thinking, Perspectives presents an opportunity to learn and engage with the ideas and discourses shaping our world. Connecting our creative community with national and international networks, this series will inspire and ignite fresh dialogues and approaches to learning about contemporary life through visual culture.
Perspectives is developed in partnership with the Hawke Centre, University of South Australia. The program is part of ACE Open and Guildhouse’s wider strategy to foster diverse, critically rigorous professional development opportunities for the South Australian community.
Perspectives 2020
In 2020 we feature three incredible inter/national speakers to the program. The free lecture series features New York based artist Jes Fan speculating on the fraught intersection between biology and identity; Arts/Fashion writer and curator Alison Kubler reflecting on the complexities of art and fashion’s interrelationship and Sydney multidisciplinary artist David Capra on contemporary art’s intersections with joy, humour, health and well-being.
Perspectives Lectures
2020: David Capra
David Capra is known for his collaborations with dachshund Teena. In 2016 they appeared on the 9 Network’s Today Show to promote her own fragrance, Eau de Wet Dogge. In 2015 Teena’s Bathtime was launched at the MCA’s Jackson Bella Room, where visitors related to Teena’s experiences around anxiety- Teena doesn’t quite enjoy bathtime. In 2018, David and Teena performed “The long and short of it: Life lessons from art-dog Teena” to an audience of 5000 at TEDx Sydney and answered the question “What makes a dachshund the perfect muse?” in an article for the Guardian newspaper. Most recently, David and Teena collaborated with Kaldor Projects, producing a series of “Teena Takes on…” educational videos and the Kaldor Studio project at the Art Gallery NSW.
2020: Alison Kubler
Art and Fashion: A Complex Collaboration.
Does art need fashion as much as fashion needs art?
Editor and arts consultant Alison Kubler examines the complexity of art and fashion’s interrelationship and its effect on visual culture.
2020: Jes Fan
Leakages, Puddles, Discharge, Infections and Bubbles…
Jes Fan’s trans-disciplinary practice emerges from a sustained inquiry into the concept of otherness. Primarily working in the field of expanded sculpture, Fan navigates the slippery complexities of identity as guided by the tactile and material histories of his chosen media.
For Leakages, Puddles, Discharge, Infections and Bubbles… Jes Fan discussed his body of work developed over the past few years and, in particular, his participation in NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020).
2019: Ema Tavola
Is the Gallery Enough?
New Zealand-based independent artist and curator Ema Tavola unpacked power and privilege in the South Pacific through the lens of the art world.
By considering the complex anthropology of race, class, intellectualism and privilege that is embedded within gallery walls, Tavola reflected on 15 years of practice-based research to discuss how enabling the genuine presence of Pacific art, artists and audiences in institutions is not a radical act, but rather a conscious decolonisation of the Gallery and its potential.
2019: Adrian Franklin
Anti-museums and the continuing crisis of art exhibition
In this presentation, renowned sociologist and design expert Adrian Franklin introduced the concept of anti-museum, documented its conceptual history since the eighteenth century, and identified its increasing relevance and presence in contemporary art since its rise in the mid-late twentieth century. Using global examples from Mona, Hobart, The New Museum, New York and Art42, Paris, Franklin presented his insightful research into the structure, influence, value, engagement and impact of anti-museums around the world.
2019: Hoda Afshar
Unmaking Images – Image Making and Representation
In this lecture, Hoda Afshar discussed the connection between images and representation, and asked how the medium of photography might be used to untangle them. Retracing the history of her own practice, Afshar recounts how the camera has served her as a tool for exploring issues of identity and marginality, both as a documentary photographer in Iran, and as part of her visual-art practice after migrating to Australia.
