2026 Research Seminar Series – Semester 1

Tēna koutou,

We warmly welcome all members of the Visual Studies Network to our 2026 Research Seminar Series.

This semester, we are delighted to present three research seminars that explore perspectives in visual studies, through engagement with 3 women artists and photographers, both from New Zealand and overseas. These sessions provide an opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, and deepen our shared interests in visual culture, theory, and practice.

All seminars will take place in:

Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic | Te Kura Matatini ki Otago – Forth Street, Dunedin.

We aim to start at 5:00 pm with refreshements. The talks will commence at 5:30 and end around 7:00 pm.

SEMINAR 1

Abstract: Angela Gunn (1961–1995) was a photographer and painter who studied at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, Christchurch, and subsequently lived in Waimate, South Canterbury. She had dealer gallery representation in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and exhibited paintings that most frequently depicted her garden; she evidently devoted a considerable amount of time to both the paintings and the garden. The paintings are evidence of the artist’s facility for turning closely observed phenomena into lyrical abstract patterns. Gunn was far from being a household name during her life, and since her untimely death her work has not gained further public exposure. This seminar offers an introduction to a small number of paintings encountered, and information gleaned, at the beginning of a research project that, it is hoped, will culminate in an exhibition and catalogue.

Ed Hanfling is an art historian, critic and occasional curator, who writes regularly for Art New Zealand and has contributed articles to international journals, including the Burlington Magazine and Third Text. He is co-author (with Gil Docking and Michael Dunn) of 250 Years of New Zealand Painting (Bateman, 2021) and his book provisionally titled Art is Good: A Critic’s History of Contemporary New Zealand Art is scheduled for publication by Bateman later this year. Ed is Postgraduate Coordinator at the Dunedin School of Art and is co-chair of the Otago Polytechnic Research Ethics Committee. He is the editor of two journals, Scope: Art & Design and Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue.

Abstract: This talk offers a series of close readings of photographs by Sibylle Bergemann, situating her fashion and fashion-adjacent work within the broader visual culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the field of women’s fashion photography. It argues that Bergemann’s photographs articulated historically specific forms of subjectivity, relationality, and everyday experience that exceeded both official ideology and conventional modes of fashion representation, whether in the GDR or in the capitalist West. Attending to gesture, distance, and practices of looking, the chapter shows how these photographs negotiated intimacy and reserve, agency and constraint, producing “touching” encounters that enabled forms of communal recognition among viewers. In foregrounding photography’s relational dimensions, the chapter positions Bergemann’s work as a distinctive intervention by a woman photographer working under real-existing socialism.

Cecilia Novero is a trained Comparatist and Germanist, in particular with a focus on the GDR and Visual Culture. She has published on contemporary European art and photography, especially the historical and neo-avant-garde movements of the 20th century, as evinced from her book Antidiets of the Avant-Garde (UMP 2010). In the last few years, her research in Visual Culture has intersected with Animal Studies and the Environmental Humanities. Her theoretical approach draws, among others, on critical theory (T.W. Adorno and W. Benjamin). She is on the editorial boards of several journals, including The Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, and the Animal Studies Journal. She is co-editor of Otago German Studies (University of Otago). A call for articles on Daniel Spoerri is soon to be circulated. You are welcome to send an abstract for consideration to: cecilia.novero@otago.ac.nz.

SEMINAR 3

In this presentation, I propose to discuss the exhibition “Taking Advantage of Poor Light” (22 August–15 September 2025) by Pippi Miller at Olga Gallery in the context of what I will call the Dunedin “art world,” borrowing the term from sociologist Howard Becker. This presentation will, then, seek to demonstrate that the works in this exhibition offer a set of figures and interlocking images that speak both to the artist’s position as a member of a particular generation who came of age in the second decade of the 21st century––and to her position as a member of a small art world, that of Dunedin.

Pippi Miller (b.1997) holds a BA HONS first class (2019) from the University of Otago; a GradDip (2020) and an MFA (2023) from the Dunedin School of Art. She was born in Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington, grew up in Ōtepoti | Dunedin and attended Logan Park High School, graduating in 2015. Her drawing and painting-based practice focuses on exploring line, colour, illustration, and children’s literature.

Hilary Radner is Emeritus Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin. Author of three monographs addressing the formation of contemporary feminine identity, Shopping Around: Consumer Culture and the Pursuit of Pleasure (1995), Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture (2011), and The New Woman’s Film: Femme-centric Movies for Smart Chicks (2017), her more recent publications include Raymond Bellour: Cinema and the Moving Image (2018), a special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies, on Art and Aotearoa New Zealand, co-edited with Edward Hanfling and Mark Stocker (NS38, September 2024), and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie: Popular Culture, Cinema, and Gender (2026), co-edited with Rebecca Stringer.

For a link to attend online please contact Ed Hanfling at: ed.hanfling@op.ac.nz