Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999

Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999 2020 Lecture series – online May 25–October 28, 2020

ACCA’s two-year lecture series Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999 will this year be presented as illustrated video lectures online. Designed to shed light on markers of change in Australian art from the last three decades of the twentieth century, Defining Moments focused last year on key exhibitions and projects from the late 1960s and '70s. This year the series will explore new institutional models and contemporary modes of exhibition-making that emerged in the 1980s and 90s—including theAsia Pacific Triennial and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, as well as exhibitions and projects led by First Nations artists and curators in Australia and internationally, among others.

In 2020, the series will be presented online as podcasts and video lectures to expand the national and international reach of this ambitious and rich historical project, beginning with an exploration of the National Gallery of Victoria’s 1982 exhibition Popism, by independent writer and researcher Judy Annear. Curated by a then 24-year-old Paul Taylor, editor and publisher of the influential contemporary art publication Art & Text, the exhibition was a provocative and rhetorical manifesto for a new generation, including Howard Arkley, David Chesworth, Juan Davila, Maria Kozic and Jenny Watson, among others.

Judy Annear’s lecture will be available on May 25, and will be followed in July with Recession art and other strategies, a lecture by artist and former director of Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art Peter Cripps, based on the IMA exhibition of the same name that he curated in 1985, in response to the social, political and cultural contexts of the times. “The series takes a deeper look at exhibitions and projects that have shaped Australian art since 1968—ambitious, contested, polemical, genre-defining and genre-defying projects that have informed and transformed the cultural landscape, along with our understanding of what constitutes art itself,” said ACCA's Artistic Director/CEO Max Delany. “Presented by some of Australia’s leading artists, curators and academics, we are pleased to launch the series as digital lectures, more widely accessible to national and international audiences.”

Defining Moments: Australian Exhibition Histories 1968–1999 is presented in association with Abercrombie & Kent, and Research Partner Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne; and supported by Media Partners Art Guide Australia, The Saturday Paper and Triple R; and Event Partners the Melbourne Gin Company, Capi and City of Melbourne. Each lecture will be accompanied by a bespoke cocktail recipe, created by the Melbourne Gin Company.

Monday, May 25
Popism, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1982
Speaker: Judy Annear, independent writer and researcher

Monday, July 13
Recession art and other strategies, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1985
Speaker: Peter Cripps, artist and a former Director of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (1984–86)
Respondent: Channon Goodwin, Director of Bus Projects and Composite: Moving Image Agency, Melbourne, and founding Co-Convener of All Conference

Monday, July 27
The Aboriginal Memorial, Biennale of Sydney, 1988
Speaker: Djon Mundine, OAM, curator, writer, artist and activist

Monday, August 24
First Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993
Speaker: Doug Hall, AM, writer, critic and a former Director of Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (1987–2007)

Monday, September 21
Aratjara: art of the first Australians, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 1993 and Fluent: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Judy Watson, Australian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 1997
Speaker: Stephen Gilchrist, writer, curator and Associate Lecturer of Indigenous Art at the University of Sydney

Monday, October 5
Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1994
Speaker: Dr Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and curator of Don’t Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS

Monday, October 26
Founding of "Gallery 4A" and the inaugural exhibition in 1997 Speaker: Mikala Tai, Director 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art