September 8, 2014

TAEM Postgraduate Week: An amalgamation of art and ideas

A mini festival of dangerous ideas is what Professor Sarah Miller perceives Postgraduate Week at the School of The Arts, English and Media (TAEM) to be. The program for this year’s event is reflective of the new multidisciplinary-focused school that brings together both creative and scholarly research across the contemporary arts, literature, communications and media.

“There were always opportunities for collaboration across disciplines, but the new school structure further enables relationships and synergies to be built,” Professor Miller, Head of TAEM, said.

Honor Harger, Director of Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, will discuss recent art that has engaged with scientific data to reflect on the environment. Ms Harger, who is a visiting scholar with Contemporary Arts and Social Transformation (CAST) research unit, will also participate in a panel exploring the intersections of art and science.

The schedule also demonstrates how postgraduate projects within the school are embedded in the context of real world experiences.

“We want research and projects by postgraduates to have an impact on the world,” Professor Miller added. “And, in an increasingly busy world, we want to make a space for conversation and dialogue around those ideas and to seed new thinking about research possibilities.”

Those immersed in the field of visual arts will be treated to a special presentation on Monday 8 September by visiting artist Narelle Jubelin. Narelle will share the story behind the project, E L A S T I C, a new model for cross cultural collaboration between Australia and Timor Leste, which emerged following a trip through Timor Leste in 2012 to document the precarious practices of traditional women weavers.

Senior Research Professor of Contemporary Arts, Professor Ian McLean, will discuss Dreamings, an exhibition of Aboriginal Art in conversation with the art of Georges de Chirico curated for the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome earlier this year.

Creative writing will also play a key role in this year's event. On Tuesday 9 September, Professor Susan Turnbull, an academic and a crime fiction reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald, will delve into the genre’s obsession with the politics of place in crime fiction in conversation with three high profile crime writers - Shane Maloney, Leigh Redhead and Michael Robotham.