"We need to stop thinking about culture as our history and start thinking about it as our future" - Amanda Donigi, Founder of Stella Magazine

About this Event:

Join us on 16 and 17 September 2019 as we explore new creative possibilities and pathways for PNG art.

Over two days we present an exciting lineup of international scholars and practitioners from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Europe and North America to critically examine the state-of-play of PNG art today. The conference aims to generate new ideas for expanding artistic, cultural and economic opportunities in the region.

Key themes

1. What are the networks (local, regional, global) that sustain PNG artists and their creative practices?

2. How has funding and support for PNG artists shifted over the last twenty years; what have been the key changes affecting the arts?

3. How can we strengthen regional engagement and support for PNG artists?

4. How do artists engage (or fail to engage) with structural opportunities for better connecting to local, national and international markets?

5. What and who have been the seminal exhibitions and artists promoting PNG art over the last twenty years?

Program

Day 1 Monday 16 September

9:30 Michael Mel , Keynote Presentation , Manager, Pacific and International Collections, Engagement, Exhibitions & Cultural Connection, Australian Museum

11.00 Anna Edmundson , Piksa Inap Tok: Contemporary Art from Papua New Guinea Lecturer, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University

12:00 Nicolas Garnier, Families of artists and artists as families in contemporary PNG Head of Oceanic Collections, Musée du quai Branly, Paris

2:00 Marion Cadora, The Internet and a New Generation of Contemporary Art in Papua New Guinea Curator and Lecturer at Department of Art & Art History, University of Hawai'i Mānoa

3.00 Shane McLeod, Cross-border connections strengthening arts links between PNG & Australia Project Director of the Aus-PNG Network at the Lowy Institute

4:30 Natalie Wilson, ‘The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity’: The Goroka Grammar School documentary film-making project

Curator, Australian & Pacific Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Day 2 Tuesday 17 September

9:30 Ruth McDougall & Sana Balai, What money can’t buy: bringing Women’s Wealth from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville to APT9: a space of healing , Curator, Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery l Gallery of Modern Art & Co-curator of the APT9 Women's Wealth project QAG, Former curator of Pacific Art at the NGV

11:00 Hillary Miria, Outsider Art Inside the Museum: Contemporary art since the 1990s Principal Curator, Contemporary Arts National Museum & Art Gallery, PNG

12:00 Susan Cochrane, Pacific ARTventures of an Australian curator, Independent Curator and Arts Writer

2:00 Don Wotton , Curating the Paradise Palette Exhibition, Curator, Paradise Palette Exhibition, Brisbane

3.00 Bronwyn Blue, Bepa/WEAV project Lessons from the Ground Up, Bepa/WEAV project

4:30 Wrap-up and recommendations

The symposium is funded through an Asia Pacific Innovation Program grant (CAP) in collaboration with the Pacific Institute (CAP) and the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies (CASS).

This symposium has been created in conjunction with the exhibition Piksa Inap Tok (Pictures Can talk): Contemporary Art from Papua New Guinea, which will be launched at the ANU School of Art and Design on September 17, 2019. For more information, please visit https://soad.cass.anu.edu.au/events/piksa-inap-tok-pictures-can-talk