Sydney Asian Art Series

A series exploring early, modern and contemporary Asian art

The Sydney Asian Art Series is presented by the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, The Power Institute, and VisAsia, with support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.The series brings four international guest speakers to Sydney each year. The lecture series focuses on topics in early, modern and contemporary Asian art.

2020 Series: Art & Technology

Each year, the Sydney Asian Art Series gathers leading international voices on critical issues in early, modern and contemporary Asian art. In response to the cancellation of in-person events, the 2020 series has moved online. As we embrace this virtual format, the 2020 series aptly explores the intersections of art and visual technologies, in the context of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Asia.

The Technological Sublime: An Ink Painter and a Coal Mine in 1960s China

In this online lecture, Claypool explores paintings of a mountain dissected into terraces by rails, wires, and excavators, focusing on the question of how to paint a mountain as it was being exposed to and was disappearing from view.

Mediating Tradition

The Sydney Asian Art Series is presented by the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, The Power Institute, and VisAsia, with support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.Yu-chih Lai presents 'Mediating Tradition: Japanese Copperplate Printing and Art Reproduction in 1880s Shanghai'.

Nature is Material, Site is Work: Philippine Artist Junyee’s Installations

The first lecture in the 2021 Sydney Asian Art Series, delivered on 1 April 2021. This lecture offers remarks on the ways to annotate the artistic work of Philippine artist Junyee germane to the concern for the category of the “environment.”

Changing Image Practices in South Asia

This presentation encompasses three recent projects which highlight how historical and contemporary modes of representation have evolved with new image technologies/discourses in South Asia.

Reimagining and Conserving the Disappearance of Hong Kong through Moving Image

The Sydney Asian Art Series is presented by the University of Sydney’s China Studies Centre, The Power Institute, and VisAsia, with support from the Art Gallery of New South Wales.In this online lecture Yung Ma presents a reflection on the challenges of conserving the image(s) of Hong Kong through art.

2021 Sydney Asian Art Series : Art and Environment

Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World

This talk narrates a history of art that perceives visual representations of the natural world, not merely as a technique to colonize and specimenize nonhuman life forms but as an outcome of interspecies relations that shaped artistic practices in the early modern period.

Plastics on Spaceship Earth

This talk analyzes Japanese “Metabolist” architects’ use of plastics as building materials in relation to current debates on anthropogenic climate change.

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