Seminars
ACAAA runs a successful series of seminars and public lectures, which attract a broad range of attendees including University of Sydney staff and students, staff and students from other tertiary institutions, staff from major art institutions and interested members of the public. ACAAA continues to maintain a wide national and international profile through notification of these seminars and other events of interest to a growing mailing list.
If you wish to be placed on the ACAAA mailing list you can contact the Centre's administration manager at .
2011 ST Lee Annual Lecture in Asian Art and Archaeology
Professor Patrick D. Flores
Patrick D. Flores is Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines and Curator of the Vargas Museum in Manila. He is Adjunct Curator at the National Art Gallery, Singapore. He was one of the curators of Under Construction: New Dimensions in Asian Art in 2000 and the Gwangju Biennale in 2008. He was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow in 2004. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Remarkable Collection: Art, History, and the National Museum (2006); and Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008). He was a grantee of the Asian Cultural Council (2010).
First Person Plural: Manifestos in the Seventies in Southeast Asia
This paper discusses the manifestos and seminal conceptual texts in Southeast Asian contemporary art, drafted by persons and organizations that sought to critique the basis of an art world and of the world by extension, and thus creating a crisis in the stability of the assertions of entitlement and the ethical “context” of art. Through examples from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia, it initiates to chart a lineage or trajectory of thought, polemic, and activism in the formation of the contemporary in the region. It revisits the various impulses of the emergence of the manifesto: post-colonial and modernist critique, nation-state development, the politics of emancipation and identity, and the aspiration to the international or global. It finally creates a space for a kind of discourse that cogently engages with more established disciplines of writing on art like art history, art theory, and art criticism.
Date: Wednesday 17th August 2011
Time: 6pm
Location: THE REFECTORY, QUADRANGLE
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
ACAAA Seminars 2011
Alexandra Green
CURATOR OF SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Alexandra Green is Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Prior to this appointment, she was Research Assistant Professor with the Department of Fine Art at the University of Hong Kong, working on Burmese murals of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Alexandra’s curatorial experience was gained as Curator of Asian Art and Museum Director at the Denison Museum in Ohio, USA and as Curator at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, UK. The former institution has a sizable collection of Burmese material, which Alexandra published in the catalogue Eclectic Collecting: Art from Burma in the Denison Museum (NUS Press, 2008). Alexandra obtained her Ph.D. on Burmese wall paintings from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and subsequently lectured at the same institution. She has also edited, with Richard Blurton (Curator, Department of Asia, The British Museum), a volume entitled Burma: Art and Archaeology (The British Museum Press, 2002).
Tradition and Innovation: Burmese wall paintings from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
Found in small temples and excavated caves, Burmese wall paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries present the viewer with two main types of imagery. There is narrative material, primarily composed of the ten great Jataka stories, the life of Gotama Buddha, and the twenty-eight previous Buddhas, located on the walls. Non-narrative matter, comprising floral and geometric motifs, magical signs, hell scenes, and protective figures, is found on ceilings, in doorways and windows, and around the narratives. The subject matter and its arrangement reveals multiple aspects of the Burmese Buddhist belief system, as well as demonstrates the Burmese willingness to absorb ideas, such as Indian textile patterns, Ayutthayan decorative methods, and Tai narratives in the wall paintings, from surrounding regions. Despite stylistic changes during the late eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries, the murals remain highly consistent in terms of the stories chosen for representation, the scenes used to portray the tales, and organisational formats because of a strong continuity in fundamental religious and social beliefs, as well as the maintenance of manuscript formats on which the mural layouts were based. The murals thus provide an excellent summary of the Buddha’s biography and Buddhist religious practice from a Burmese perspective.
Date: Thursday 17th March 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Main Quadrangle, History Room S223
Rebecca Suter
LECTURER IN JAPANESE STUDIES
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Rebecca Suter is a lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research interests are in the areas of modern Japanese literature and popular culture, particularly manga. Her first book, The Japanization of Modernity, focused on contemporary Japanese writer Murakami Haruki’s role as a cultural mediator between Japan and the United States. Her current ARC-funded research project concentrates on another instance of cross-cultural adaptation of Western modes of thought in Japan: the interpretations and misinterpretations of Christian images in modern and contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture, and the way they challenge current views of colonialism, postcolonialism and globalization.
“Queer Salvation in Japanese Visual Cultures”
The creative appropriation of Christian imagery has played a significant role in postwar Japanese culture. A particularly interesting figure in this respect is that of Amakusa Shirô, the fifteen year-old leader of the Shimabara rebellion, the last Christian revolt after the definitive ban on foreign religion of the Tokugawa period. Since Yamada Fûtarô’s famous recreation of Shirô as a bloodthirsty demon in his Makai Tenshô (Demon resurrection) in 1967, the character has appeared in a number of different media and genres and has undergone a number of intriguing transformations, from sex-obsessed sadistic samurai to gender-ambiguous gentle Messiah. In my paper, I will first trace the transformations of the character within postwar Japanese visual culture, including film, comics, and animation. I will then focus on one case study, Michiyo Akaishi’s Amakusa 1637 (2002), a 12-volume comic book series that retells the legend of the revolt in the form of a “girl knight” story.
This seminar is being co - hosted by the Asian Studies Program
Date: Thursday 24th March 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Main Quadrangle, History Room S223
Dr. Pamela Gutman and Dr. Bob Hudson
Dr Pamela Gutman is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Art History and Film Studies and Dr Bob Hudson is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Archaeology. They have published widely, together and separately, on Burma and Southeast Asian art, archaeology and history.
A First Century (?) Stele from Śrīkṣetra
Pamela Gutman and Bob Hudson bring Art History and Archaeology together
A stele discovered at Śrīkṣetra, central Burma in the 1970s, its provenance suggesting an earlier date than is usually given to the founding of the city, can now be attributed to the beginning of the first millennium, and is therefore the earliest Indic sculpture yet found in Southeast Asia. Over 1.5m high, it depicts on one side a great man with two attendants and on the other, an empty throne. Stylistically it can be shown to be related to the early art of Central and Southeast India – Bharhut, Bodhgaya, Sanchi and early Amaravati - reinterpreted to accommodate local beliefs. Luce’s proposal that a megalithic tradition persisted in the later art of Śrīkṣetra is explored. The central figure on the obverse of the stele can be compared to Yakṣa figures at Sanchi. He carries a massive club, recalling the Burmese chronicle tradition that the founder king of Śrīkṣetra, Duttabaung, was invested by Indra with auspicious weapons. The club is also carried however by Vasudeva- Krsna. The two attendants carry regalia, garuda and cakra dhvajas, and it is suggested that the central figure might be a localised pre-Kuṣānic form of Vasudeva-Krsna. The empty throne on the reverse of the stele, similarly depicted from Bharhut to Amaravati, represents the place of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, Bodhgaya, and like later replicas of the Mahabodhi shrine in Southeast Asia served to reproduce the Indian landscape and thereby allow the local population to gain access to the living presence of the historical Buddha. A related tradition involving the throne is found in Sri Lanka from the third century BC and in the later art of Śrīkṣetra. In Wolters’ terms, a “man of prowess” now asserts his power through Brahmanic ritual. Buddhism, which had become institutionalised in the post-Mauryan period and had already been successful in pioneering newly-developing regions in Andhra and elsewhere had followed old-established trade routes to Burma. As in India the ruler of Śrīkṣetra now bestows his munificence upon Buddhist monastic establishments.
Date: Thursday 14th April 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Main Quadrangle, History Room S223
Dr. Francis Maravillas
Francis Maravillas is Associate Researcher at the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he also lectures in cultural studies. His current research interests include contemporary art and visual culture in Asia and Australia, curatorial practice and international exhibitions and art in urban spaces. His work on Asian art in Australia appears in various journals and exhibition catalogues as well as recent edited collections including Crossing cultures: conflict, migration and convergence (2009), Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and Close Encounters (2007) and In the Eye of the Beholder Reception and Audience for Modern Asian Art (2006). He was previously a board member of the 4a Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney (2004-2007).
Mapping the Edge: Art and Community beyond Identity
The recent turn to the dynamics of relationality and interconnection in contemporary art theory has coincided with a heightened awareness of the complexities of context and the limitations of identity and community as organising tropes of art and exhibition practice. Since its launch in 2010, the Edge of Elsewhere exhibition series (2010-12) organized by Campbelltown Arts Centre and 4a Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney, has sought to redefine and expand the boundaries of exhibitionary and artistic practice through complex forms of collaboration and engagement with the diverse local communities from Asia and the Pacific in the outer western suburbs of Sydney.
In this paper, I examine the ways in which Edge of Elsewhere may be understood as aligning itself with a post-identity politics that emphasizes relations and connections and the emergence of fluid, contingent communities that are not anchored in either a bounded territory or a coherent identity. In particular, I explore how this shift from identity to relationality – along with the positing of community as a dynamic process and unstable formation – necessitates new ways of thinking about art and community. Significantly, I argue that Edge of Elsewhere evokes an alternate conception of community and relationality in art, one that moves beyond closed and convivial circuits of interaction towards a transnational aesthetic assemblage that foregrounds the complex, and at times fraught, ligatures of meaning and interconnection between diverse, transversal locales.
Date: Thursday 5th May 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Main Quadrangle, History Room S223
Christophe Pottier
French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) & Visiting Scholar, Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney
Christophe Pottier re-established the French School of Asian Studies (École française d'Extrême-Orient, or EFEO) research centre in Siem Reap in 1992 and has been director of the facility until December 2009. As an architect, he directed restoration and conservation works in Angkor, in particular on the Royal Terraces of Angkor Thom. His 1999 PhD thesis on the archaeological mapping of the Angkor region, fundamentally transformed the understanding of the residential and social organisation of Angkor by mapping fields and house mounds, and has redefined the debate about water management at Angkor by identifying inlet and outlet points for the baray (reservoirs) about which there has been much contention. During the last decade, he established and directed the MAFKATA archaeological mission that has reassessed the earlier archaeological sequence of Angkor. He is also a founding co-director of the Greater Angkor Project with the University of Sydney and the National authority APSARA, and of the Angkor Medieval Hospitals Archaeological Project. He is actually a visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney.
Was Angkor already Angkor before Angkor?
This presentation proposes an assessment of the earlier period of settlements in the Angkor region. This period is critical for the understanding of the angkorian pattern and its territory development. After underlining the vagueness of the beginning of the angkorian period in Angkor, the talk will recall the limited knowledge available on the earlier phases of the region history. Finally, it will introduce some recent archaeological research focusing on the origin of Angkor in Angkor itself.
Date: Wednesday 11th May 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Quad Oriental S204
Baoping Li
The University of Sydney Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Angkor Research Program
Department of Archaeology
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
Baoping received his BA and MA degrees from the Archaeology Department of Beijing University, and then worked with Dr. Bruce Doar at China Archaeology and Art Digest. He did his PhD at the University of Queensland, then worked there as an Australia Postdoctoral Fellow. Baoping's primary interests are Chinese history, archaeology and cultures, though his writings centre around ancient Chinese ceramics and their global exporting. Baoping is an acting editor-in-chief for the Complete Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China, a set of 16 volumes of ceramic catalogues (Beijing: Science Press 2008). He is currently working with Profs. Roland Fletcher and Jeffrey Riegel on Chinese export ceramics unearthed across Angkor and Chinese historiography on Cambodia, as part of the Greater Angkor Project funded by ARC. In addition to traditional archaeology, Baoping also works on chemical characterisation of shards from Chinese kiln sites for the purpose of sourcing archaeological ceramics and scientific authentication of antiques, one example being the chemical sourcing of Tang dynasty ceramics from the Belitung shipwreck (c. 826 CE, http://www.asia.si.edu/Shipwrecked/) found in the Java Sea.
Made for the West? -
Discovery and Interpretation of Ming Dynasty Export Porcelain Found from Tombs in China
Kraak porcelain was among the first Chinese export ceramic to arrive in Europe in mass quantities. The name "kraak" derives from carracks, the Portuguese ships in which the porcelain was transported. Characterised by panel decorations (see figure), kraak porcelain was copied and imitated all over the world, by potters in Japan and Persia–where Dutch merchants turned when the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE) rendered Chinese originals unavailable–and ultimately in Delft of Netherlands. Kraak porcelain was frequently featured in Dutch still life paintings of foreign luxuries, and commonly seen in present western museum collections.
In recent decades some kraak porcelain plates were unearthed from Ming tombs in Jiangxi, and this lead some scholars to doubt the traditional view that kraak wares were made only for exporting. However, almost all of these kraak plates are seconds, and were found only in limited places along the transportation route from Jingdezhen to coastal ports of Guangdong and Fujian. The author argues that these seconds were carried and sold to local people by sailors on their way of transporting Jingdezhen products to ports for exporting, and for funeral purpose only. This view is supported by a burial custom popular in Ming-Qing period Jiangxi, whereby porcelain plates were placed under the head of the deceased as shoupan or "longevity (i.e. afterlife or funeral) plates. The finds of kraak seconds in China tombs only provide a good example for the statement made in 1616 AD by Coen of the Dutch East India Company:"in China assortments like these [porcelain for Europe market] are not in use…the Chinese were obliged to export and peddle them however much money they lost thereby...". Illustrated with pictures, the talk will propose how a holistic approach integrating archaeology, history, anthropology and even some chemical sourcing may deepen our understanding of human societies.
Date: Thursday 19th May 2011
Time: 5pm-6.30pm
Location: Main Quadrangle, History Room S223
S.T. Lee Annual Lecture in Asian Art and Archaeology
Lee Lecture 2010
Professor Miriam Stark, University of Hawai’i-Manoa.
Lee Lecture 2009
Dr Pascal Royère, EFEO, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Lee Lecture 2008
Dr Eugene Wang, Harvard University
Lee Lecture 2007.doc
Dr Annabel Teh Gallop, British Library
Inaugural Lee Lecture 2006
Dr Christophe Pottier, EFEO, Siem Reap, Cambodia