Thursday, May 16, 2013

Join us for a conversation between author Claire Roberts and Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, exploring the relationship between photography and China - 6pm Thursday May the 16th

Covering the period from the inception of photography to the present day, Photography and China is the first historical survey of photography in China to be published in English. Bringing together material held in museums, archives and private collections all over the world, Photography and China explores the long tradition of Chinese art and visual culture. It is this tradition that photography was initially born from, and has subsequently gone on to expand in new directions.

Locating the images within their particular social and temporal contexts, Claire Roberts describes the varied purposes with which photographers in China created their work, which included the commercial, political, artistic and journalistic. The book places emphasis on the practitioners themselves and the images they created. The photographs cover an astonishing array of subjects, from landscapes and rural scenes to propaganda and social upheavals; from the earliest self-portraiture to radical contemporary art.

Photography and China brings together more than 130 images to chronicle photography's relationship to this complex country, underlining the medium's status as both witness to and agent of historical change.

Claire spoke at Asia Bookroom shortly after Friendship in Art was published. If you were present on the night you will know that she spoke very well making the sometimes complex world of Chinese art much clearer for those of us who know little about the field, and impressing those who knew a great deal more! This In-Conversation, between Claire Roberts and Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia, is an evening if you are interested in photography, art in Asia or China you must not miss.

About the Author:
Claire Roberts is a historian of Chinese art and a curator. She is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Adelaide. She was a Co-ordinate Research Scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University (2011); Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2009-2010); Research Fellow with Geremie R Barmé’s Federation Fellowship project at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University (2006-2009), Senior Curator of Asian arts at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (1988-2010), and Curator at the Museum of Chinese-Australian History, Melbourne (1986-1988).

Claire studied at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute (1978-1979) and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1979-1981). She has a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from The Australian National University.

Claire has published widely on Chinese visual and material culture, and curated numerous exhibitions including Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture (2012-13), The Great Wall of China (2006), Evolution & Revolution: Chinese dress 1700s to now (1997); In Her View: The Photographs of Hedda Morrison in China and Sarawak (1993) and Post Mao Product: New Art from China (1992). She was curatorial adviser, Chinese art, for the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, in 1993, 1996 and 1999.

Her recent books are Photography and China (2013), Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture (2012), Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (2010), and Other Histories: Guan Wei’s Fable for a Contemporary World (2008).

Claire Will Be in Conversation with Gael Newton
Gael Newton is Senior Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Australia and author of Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988 (1988) the publication accompanying the Gallery's Bicentennial year exhibition of that title. She studied at the Power Institute of Fine Arts and graduated in photography from Elam Art School Auckland University in 1973. She was the foundation curator of photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1974-84 and has curated numerous Australian and international exhibitions institutions including early publications in the 1980s and 90s on Max Dupain, Harold Cazneaux, John Kauffman and Australian Pictorial photography .

Since 2006 Newton had been developing a collection surveying the history of photography across the Asia-Pacific region. The first major exhibition in this program, Picture Paradise: Asia-Pacific photography 1840s-1940s, was held in 2008 and the second on photography in Indonesia 1860s-1940s, opens February 22, 2014 and will be followed by a publication on the history of photography in Southeast Asia in 2016.


When: 6pm Thursday 16th of May, 2013

Where: Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1 - 3 Lawry Place, Macquarie. ACT

RSVP: By 15th of May please by phoning 6251 5191 or Email Us

Admission by gold coin donation to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

This is an event not to be missed, but, if you can't join us on the 16th of May and would like to buy a signed copy let us know as it can easily be arranged.