Now online
111 Sturt Street, Southbank
Melbourne VIC 3006
Australia
ACCA’s two-year lecture series focussing on ambitious, contested, polemical, genre-defining and genre-defying contemporary art exhibitions and projects is now available in its entirety as free podcasts and illustrated video lectures.
The series began in April 2019 when Australian art collector and patron John Kaldor discussed the moment he invited French artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to Australia to wrap two-and-a-half kilometres of coast at Sydney’s Little Bay, resulting in the first monumental environmental work by the pair: Wrapped Coast – One million Square Feet 1968-69.
Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968-99 concluded this week with a lecture by Dr Mikala Tai on the founding of Gallery 4A, a non-profit, Sydney-based organisation established in 1996 to present and promote the work of Asian and Asian-Australian artists.
ACCA Artistic Director/CEO Max Delany said the series of fifteen lectures traces the legacies of artists and curators, addresses the critical reception of significant selected projects and reflects on a wide range of exhibitions and formats that have helped shape contemporary art and Australian culture more broadly.
“We’re pleased to now present Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968-99 in its entirety, online. Delivered by a diversity of commentators and protagonists, the series covers a number of subjects and contexts, from the creation of murals at the Papunya School in 1971 that set off the Western Desert Painting movement, and early Australian feminist art initiatives, to the landmark 1994 exhibition Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS at the National Gallery of Australia, among other exhibitions that respond to important moments and movements in art history and Australian culture.
“The Defining Moments series is a rich resource, offering new insights and reflections on game changers in contemporary art over the last three decades of the 20th century,” Delany said.
The Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999 lecture series includes:
2019 Season
Selected projects from 1968–1983 encompassing interventions in public space and remote communities, alongside projects in artist-run and institutional spaces. Available as podcasts on ACCA's website and podcast platforms:
John Kaldor on Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Coast 1968-69, with respondent Rebecca Coates
John Kean on Digging for Honey Ants: the Papunya mural project, with respondent Hannah Presley
Ian Millis on Object and Idea, National Gallery of Victoria, 1973
Peter Kennedy on Inhibodress, multimedia interference, with respondent Sue Cramer
David Chesworth on Clifton Hill Community Music Centre 1976-83
Julie Ewington on Almost Anything Goes: Sculpturescape 1975 at Mildura
Janine Burke on A Room of their own: creating a space for the feminist collective, with respondent Helen Hughes
Anne Marsh on Post Object Art in Australia and New Zealand
2020 Season
New institutional models and contemporary modes of exhibition-making emerging in the 1980s and 1990s. Presented digitally as freely accessible video and podcast lectures on ACCA's website and podcast and video platforms:
Judy Annear on Popism, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1982
Peter Cripps on Recession art and other strategies, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1985, with respondent Channon Goodwin
Djon Mundine OAM on The Aboriginal Memorial, Biennale of Sydney, 1988
Doug Hall AM on the First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993
Ted Gott on Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994
Stephen Gilchrist on Aratjara: art of the first Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 1993 and fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Judy Watson, Australian Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 1997
Mikala Tai on the founding of Gallery 4A and the inaugural 1997 exhibition.
Access podcasts and videos for the full two-year lecture series here.
