Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network 20 March 2024
Ed Hanfling
Otago Harbour, 1978, an “intimate map”
by Joanna Margaret Paul
R00m F209 Puna Kawa, F Block
Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street
Dunedin
Wednesday 20 March 5:30 pm
Joanna Margaret Paul, Otago Harbour, 1978.
Synthetic polymer paint and collage on paper, 535 x 740 mm.
Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, acc. no. 78/205.
Otago Harbour is a picture in the Hocken Collections made by Joanna Margaret Paul in 1978. It is, in large part, a lively acrylic-painted and pencil-drawn view, or views, of Dunedin from the top of Southern Cemetery, Mornington, with collage additions – notably, a cropped reproduction of Johannes Vermeer’s Milkmaid (c1660), a scrap of still life drawing and a carefully sliced aerial photograph of the part of Dunedin represented in the painted view. In combining different modes of representation, Otago Harbour has much in common with a series of works Paul called “Intimate Maps.” Paul draws attention to the subjective or contingent act of representing place, rather than place as an objective fact, and exhibits a curiously contemporary sense of intimacy with, or embeddedness in, her environment. This seminar presents a detailed analysis of a complex picture, considering its significance in the context of other bodies of work by Paul (including her photographs and films) and New Zealand art history.
Ed Hanfling holds the position of Lecturer in Art History and Theory at Dunedin School of Art. He writes regularly as a critic for Art New Zealand, and has published journal articles and books on such topics and artists as modernism in New Zealand art, values and judgements, Morris Louis, Milan Mrkusich and Ian Scott. His recent publications include 250 Years of New Zealand Painting (Bateman 2021) as co-author, and as co-editor, a special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies, “Art and Aotearoa New Zealand: Cultures, Controversies and Histories,” forthcoming December 2024. He currently serves as co-editor of Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue.
Research Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network September 20 2023
Colonial panorama to digital reality:
A Practice-based analysis of nineteenth century and contemporary
immersive arts
Philip Madill, Auckland University of Technology
Wednesday 20 September
Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin: 5 – 7 pm
Philip Madill, Displacement of Accent, graphite on paper, 2023
This seminar will explore, through practice-based research, the evolution from pre-cinema to contemporary mixed-reality entertainment. Mixed reality in this context refers to the coexistence of overlapping virtual and physical spaces achieved by creating and experiencing immersive environments. It will also cover the historical role pre-cinema played, as a form of instructive entertainment, in the promotion and colonisation of New Zealand during the Nineteenth Century. The artistic phenomenon not only served to inform prospective immigrants but propagate ideas of ‘otherness’ through the selective use of imagery and the layout of the exhibition spaces. The discussion will conclude with an analysis of contemporary works by Janet Cardiff, William Kentridge, and Victor Burgin and their use of digital animation to explore the historical impact of pre-cinema entertainment.
Philip Madill is a Dunedin-based artist whose practice explores the historical relationship between photography and drawing. In 2014, he completed a master’s degree from the Dunedin School of Art and holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Otago. Madill is also working towards a Doctor of Philosophy in Art and Design at the Auckland University of Technology.
Dunedin School of Art and University of Otago (Languages and Cultures)
Research Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network July 19 2023
Research Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network July 19, 2023
Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin: 5 – 7 pm
Visual diffusion and spiritualist practice: a research project on three spiritualists in Aotearoa New Zealand. Minnie Chapman (1856-1949) Sophia Garland Allan (1867-1959) Berta Sinclair Burns (1893-1972)
Joanna Osborne
Image credit: New Zealand Truth, 8 May 1930
With an emphasis on the joys and pitfalls of primary research, Osborne shares some of her findings on the practice of ‘spirit drawing’ in early 20th Century Aotearoa New Zealand. Within a broader scope of new religious movements, histories of feminism and the arts, emerge questions that consider the international diffusion, material expression and interpretive complexities of this art as spiritual practice.
Joanna Osborne is an independent researcher in art history with interests in studies of religion and spirituality. She has a PhD from the University of Otago, was the Dunedin Public Art Gallery 2020 Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Curatorial Intern and has published on the work of Allie Eagle (1949-2022) and Joanna Margaret Paul (1945-2003). She currently works as an academic literacies tutor and quality assurance specialist for an international student support company.
For further information email: visual-studies@otago.ac.nz
Research Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network 3 May 2023
Research Seminar: Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network 3 May 2023
Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin: 5 – 7 pm
“Digit Painting – brown/purple over pink, 2022, by Noel Ivanoff”
Ed Hanfling, Dunedin School of Art
Noel Ivanoff, Digit Painting – brown/purple over pink, 2022, oil on plywood panel, 740 x 560 mm
This talk is an attempt to come to terms with one abstract painting by Auckland artist Noel Ivanoff, attending to the “touch” of the painter and (perhaps) having recourse to the seemingly unremarkable (but possibly contentious) notion of the artist’s personal sensibility, and (with some trepidation) placing Ivanoff’s work in relation to an unfurling tradition of abstract painting in New Zealand by male artists, notably Milan Mrkusich and Ian Scott.
Ed Hanfling is an art historian, critic and occasional curator, and a lecturer in art history and theory at the Dunedin School of Art. His research focuses on issues of judgement and value, modernist abstraction and twentieth-century art in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a co-author of 250 Years of New Zealand Painting (Bateman 2021), and has published books and/or articles on a succession of male abstract artists – Milan Mrkusich, Ian Scott, Morris Louis, Mervyn Williams, Roy Good, et al.
Research Seminar:Cultures, Histories, Identities in Visual Studies Research Network April 05, 2023
Room F209, F Block, Otago Polytechnic, Forth Street, Dunedin: 5:30 pm–7:00 pm
Painted Visions of Propriety: Raja Ravi Varma and the Feminine Ideal in Indian Visual Culture
Radhika Raghav, University of Otago
Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) Damayanti and the Swan, (c.1880s), oil on canvas.
In nineteenth-century India, against the backdrop of colonial industrialisation and rising Hindu nationalism, a new set of images was finding its way into the visual realm—lithographic prints by artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906). The colourful prints were reproductions of Varma’s hugely popular academic-style oil paintings of the Vedic heroines depicted as virtuous consorts of the mythical Hindu ancestors. Thereafter, Varma’s female models were sustained across industrial arts, including cinema, and shaped the visual prototype of ideal (Hindu) femininity. This seminar frames the iconographical development and commercial distribution of the canonical heroines painted by Varma vis-à-vis the question of a woman’s beauty and duty in modern India. Furthermore, it sheds light on how Varma’s female model continues to enjoy supremacy over other modes of womanhood in the visual culture of twenty-first century India.
Radhika Raghav currently teaches in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Otago, Dunedin. She holds a PhD in Visual Studies and a master’s degree in Art History. Her research interests revolve around the representations of gender and sexuality in South Asian popular culture and media.
Dunedin School of Art and University of Otago (Languages and Cultures)
Call for Papers: CAMERA STYLO 5
Approaching Extinction: Anthropological and Environmental Encounters in Literature and Cinema
Sydney University and Online, 12–14 July, 2023
Deadline for submission: 15 March, 2023
The Sydney Literature and Cinema Network welcomes proposals for single papers, audio-visual essays and pre-constituted three-person panels on the topic of ‘Anthropological and Environmental Approaches to Literature and Cinema’.
In the wake of the global environmental crisis, we welcome contributions that address the capacity of art to illuminate, challenge, and inspire researchers and practitioners to address the existential threat of our climate emergency.
We invite responses to this theme across the broad spectrum of aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and practice-based research.
The Sydney Literature and Cinema Network was created in 2015 and has convened four successful international conferences and several symposia. It brings together researchers from Australia, the US, the UK and across the globe to examine the interconnections between mediums, technologies, expressive modalities and representational forms.
The Sydney Literature and Cinema Network is seeking a variety of applications to present on the themes of the conference that may include:
- Eco-politics
- Eco-philosophy
- Eco-aesthetics
- Eco-fiction
- Post-humanism
- The Anthropocene
- Technological Futures
- AI and the Environment
- Cultural Anthropology
- Environment and Culture
- The Sovereignty of Environmental Communities
Guide for Authors:
We welcome 20-minute papers, video lectures and essays, pre-organised panels (can be longer than twenty minutes), forums and other presentations on these themes and more.
- Please submit a 300-word abstract and a short biography by Wednesday March 15th 2023 (AEDT) to camerastylo5conference@gmail.com
- Panels should include a short abstract addressing a common theme in addition to individual abstracts
Presenters at CS5 will be invited to submit papers for the inaugural special issue of the international journal Camera-Stylo: Intersections in Literature and Cinema.
New Dunedin Painting (redux)
Exhibition New Dunedin Painting (redux) is co-curated by Cultures, Histories and Identities Research Network member Michael Greaves. Its catalogue features writings from Ed Hanfling and Leoni Schmidt.
For more information click on the following links:
Wave Project Space Facebook page
Instagram Wave Project Space.Otepoti
Kate Fitzharris: Companion Piece
Publication News
The current issue of ART NEW ZEALAND includes the following articles by our Research Network members, Joanna Osborne and Ed Hanfling. Congratulations to both!Joanna Osborne, ”Allie Eagle (1949-2022),” Art New Zealand 183 (Spring 2022): 55–57.Edward Hanfling, review of ”Deborah Rundle: ’Tomorrow is Today Now,’” Art New Zealand 183 (Spring 2022): 65.
They Came to Me in the Night: Selected Works by Wesley John Fourie
This new issue of the Occasional Essay Series, They Came to Me in the Night: Selected Works by Wesley John Fourie, includes essays by Visual Studies Research Network members Bridie Lonie and Alistair Fox.
Lonie, Bridie and Alistair Fox. They Came to Me in the Night: Selected Works by Wesley John Fourie. Dunedin: RDS Gallery. ISBN: 978-1-99-117301-0
