Art in translation: Current perspectives on arts writing

John McDonald

Art criticism in the age of publicity

Newspaper critics are used to working under pressure but with declines in circulation and advertising revenue many papers have begun to choose between informed, original criticism and arts ‘colour’ stories. For a newspaper to persist with a dedicated art column is to hold fast to a philosophy in which the arts (or culture) remains a core concern. As a long standing critic, McDonald will analyse the changes that have beset the industry, and take the pulse of a precarious profession.

John McDonald is best known as the art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. He has written for many Australian and international publications, worked as an editor and publisher; and lectured at colleges and galleries around the country. He was Head of Australian Art at the National Gallery of Australia from 1999-2000 and from 2002-2004 was Director of Newcontemporaries. John has an extensive curatorial practice and is the author of several books, notably The Art of Australia: From Exploration to Federation, and Studio: Australian Artists on the Nature of Creativity. He also has a longstanding interest in Chinese art and was a major contributor to The Big Bang, White Rabbit Gallery.

Jane Howard

Artists need audiences need critics: why companies aren't engaging with criticism, and how this hurts their cause

Australia’s arts have never been particularly welcoming to its critics, but hostility is growing. Howard considers the current critical landscape, diminishing publishing space, and the treatment of audiences as consumers rather than participants. But, in looking at the ways critical thinking empowers audiences, she considers the biggest winners from supporting criticism will be arts organisations themselves.

Jane Howard is a freelance journalist, critic, artist and researcher. She is a contributing editor at Kill Your Darlings, where she focuses on podcast criticism, and a regular contributor to The Guardian Australia. Her writing has been published in ABC Arts Online, RealTime, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, Crikey, Junkee and The Stage. Jane’s artistic work explores writing in collaborative digital spaces, most prominently as director of the 2016 Digital Writers’ Festival. She is currently manager of communications and development at ActNow, research assistant at Deakin University and a 2018 Australia Council Future Leader.

Ali Gumillya Baker

Sovereignty, writing and self determined spaces

A discussion of voice and representation in relation to ideas of curation and writing for First Nations cultural practice. As an artist, activist and academic, Baker will explore aspects of her research on colonial archives, memory and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and the power of words.

Ali Gumillya Baker is a Mirning woman from the Nullarbor on the West Coast of South Australia. She is a multi-disciplinary artist, performer, filmmaker and member of the performance group The Unbound Collective. Ali is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University and holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) from the University of South Australia, Master of Arts (Screen Studies) and PhD in Australian Studies from Flinders University. Her research and teaching interests engage with colonial archives, cultural studies, memory and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Ali has recently been appointed to the Artlink Board of Directors.

Tara McDowell

If all the world were paper, and all the water ink

In this talk, McDowell considers the challenges and rewards of bringing curatorial practice into academia, and the new forms of writing that emerge from that unholy alliance. Using fragments of her own recent writing, she’ll think through what in art history might be worth holding onto, and what we can let slip away.

Tara McDowell is Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practice at Monash University. Tara has held curatorial appointments at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and completed a PhD in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her recent curatorial and research interests include speculative histories, experimental pedagogy, alternative archives and documentation, contemporary curating and public space. She was Founding Senior Editor of The Exhibitionist journal; her most recent book, The Artist As, was published by Sternberg Press in 2018; and The Householders: Robert Duncan and Jess is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2019.