In-Conversation: Waves of Thought — Conceptual to Postconceptual Practice
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When
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Address
EG02, E Block, UNSW Art & Design, Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd Paddington NSW 2021
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Hours
3–4PM
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Phone
+61 2 8936 0888
James Gatt, Elizabeth Pulie and conceptual artist and cultural activist Ian Milliss discuss the role of art and artists in society, and map an intergenerational lineage of conceptual art in Australia. Milliss will also revive Pulie’s magazine Lives of the Artist during the exhibition, editing the publication’s 11th issue.
Ian Milliss is one of Australia’s first conceptual artists. His early 1970s participatory works soon led to a practice based on the premise that the artist’s role is to generate cultural change rather than manufacture content for the art industry. He has since worked with many progressive social and political groups and mostly with audiences outside the art world, ranging from urban activism and unionism to innovative agriculture. He argues that currently the most culturally significant activities are not recognised as art, are done by people who don’t call themselves artists, and will only be categorised as art in retrospect.
James Gatt is an independent curator and writer living and working on Gadigal land. He has worked closely with contemporary artists from Australia and New Zealand on projects and exhibitions since 2015, taking a conceptual approach to identify potentials for alternative models that relate to and shape contemporary art. Gatt’s research focuses predominantly on conceptual art practices and histories, social and political implications and strategies for art, and art’s facility for generating ideas and potentialities. From 2015 to 2017, Gatt was founding director of Squiggle Space, a hybrid studio and project space dedicated to open-ended enquiry and critical discussion. Prior to this, Gatt worked as an educator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is currently Associate Director at Sarah Cottier Gallery where he has curated exhibitions including Sculpture Salon (2018), Contemporary Recalcitrants (2019), and most recently Dialogue 2: On Hessian (2020).
Elizabeth Pulie has exhibited her work since 1989. Until 2002 a sense of art as decoration and commodity informed her decorative painting project, while from 2002 until 2006 she focused on a relational practice. Her work has recently opened to new media such as weaving, collage and embroidery. Recent exhibitions include ‘The National: New Australian Art’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017); ‘Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art and Feminism’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2017); ‘The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard’, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2018); ‘Bauhaus Now!’, Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne (2019); ‘On Hessian’, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2020); and ‘Transplant’, SCA Gallery and Knulp, Sydney (2021). Pulie is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.
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Presented in conjunction with #117 (Survey), Australian artist Elizabeth Pulie’s first survey exhibition, mapping 30 years of practice.