IAC Art Talks
The Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University (WSU) enables the development of deeper ties forged through an open, intellectual and dynamic engagement with centuries-old and emerging Chinese arts and culture in the Australian context. We achieve our goals through a range of programs including art exhibitions, research projects, cultural exchanges, lecture series, public events, collaborations with arts and cultural organisations and community engagement.
IAC is excited to launch our 2023 new lecture series called Art Talks. Art Talks aims to explore and to present traditions and forms of Chinese art and the influence of Chinese art on various new or renewed forms and styles of art in Australia, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and around Asia Pacific. The series will reflect many different viewpoints and cover a wide range of expertise. It will showcase contemporary Chinese art as well as look at traditional painting practices that began centuries ago. A particular focus will be on the emergence of Chinese art in Australia and integrated Chinese art produced by Australian artists of Chinese / Asian heritage who feel a connection to their ancestral roots while being deeply influenced by their lives here. Art Talks will shine a spotlight on cross-fertilisation of ideas, influences and artistic practices that converge to create a uniquely Australian-Chinese genre. Invited speakers include artists, art historians, academics, curators, art experts and influential gallery owners and collectors. Art Talks series will be held on a monthly basis and on Zoom Webinar to be accessible to local, interstate and international audiences. The edited recording of each lecture will be posted on the IAC website and made accessible on online platforms.
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IAC Art Talks 2026 #2: Unstable Monuments by Dr Daniel Press[[link]]
The notion of the copy is closely tied to the production of colonial monuments in Australia. In 1919, the City of Hobart went looking for a statue of King Edward VII. It settled on a design already standing in marble at Cubbon Park in Bengaluru, India, because it was the only one the council could afford. Tasmania’s monument to empire has been a copy of an Indian one ever since. This talk follows both statues through the speaker’s practice-based doctoral research, which used 3D scanning and lost-wax casting to reify the institutional lives of colonial monuments.
Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) is Australia’s only performing arts company with a remit for producing, developing and enabling Asian Australian works and artists to reach main stages nationally. Through highly valued productions and initiatives, CAAP is regarded as a crucial leader and catalyst in the ongoing shift to greater cultural diversity and inclusiveness in the arts. In this talk, Artistic Director Tessa Leong will track the evolution of the company, detail case studies of work during her time at CAAP and give an update on what’s next amidst the changes and challenges of our present moment.
IAC Art Talks Series 3 Lecture 2: Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma Dr Mai Nguyễn-Long (Catch up Online)[[link]]
In this talk, Dr Mai Nguyễn-Long talks abour her practice-based research project Vomit Girl Beyond Diasporic Trauma, which examines how acculturated intergenerational trauma gives rise to binary identities and fixed narratives that prevent meaningful reconnection with ‘homelands.’ This research project proposes that contemporary art can draw from folkloric strategies to open up spaces for suppressed, hidden, and new stories to emerge beyond diasporic trauma.
Retired theatre director and actor, Carrillo Gantner AC, has had a long career in the promotion of Australian theatre and closer cultural engagement with our neighbours in the Asian region. over the last 15 years, three times he has led delegations of senior Australian performing arts managers to China as guests of the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, most recently in October last year (2024). In this talk, he focuses on this last delegation: its purpose and anticipated outcomes, its itinerary and activities in Shanghai, Wuzhen and Beijing where they saw many performances, visited venues and festivals, and met leading performing arts companies and artists.
Dr Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen is an early-career artist working between drawing, listening and sound. She investigates trajectories of cultural exchange and transformation that have occurred through intergenerational migration, trade and colonisation in Southeast Asia. In this talk, she explores how three key phases within her artistic practice connect with Chinese cultural traditions through intuitive or referential ways.
Chinese classical painting, especially the xieyi (writing mind) genre, has for over a millennium provided physical representation of Chinese philosophies and healing. In this richly illustrated webinar, Dr Richard Wu delves into the introspections embedded within this ancient art form, drawing parallels with western psychotherapy.
Papercutting is one of the most popular folk arts in China and dates back over 2000 years. Dr Tianli Zu is a Chinese Australian multimedia artist who has expanded this Chinese traditional craft to contemporary art. In this talk. Dr Zu talks about her recent research which explores the first Chinese migrants who came to Shoalhaven, on the South Coast of New South Wales in the 1840s.
In this talk Simon Chan shared his experience and passion for Art and Architecture and how his life has evolved over the years. Initially an architect with his own architectural practice, SCA Architects, an epiphany, at the crossroads of his life’s journey, led him to eventually become an art gallerist with his art gallery, Art Atrium, exhibiting contemporary Australian, Asian and Aboriginal art with a special focus on cross-cultural collaboration and expression in art in a globalised world. He talks about his passion for his family of artists that he represents and supports and how art and culture have become his focus in life.
Yin Cao has been working at the AGNSW for more than 12 years. In this talk, she reviews the foundational definition of a curator and explores contemporary topics which have impact on the curatorial practice, as well as the working relationships within the institutional culture and with the relevant stakeholders. She also explains how a Curator of Chinese Art can play an important role in social engagement, community collaboration and the co-creation of exhibitions, as well as highlighting the challenges and limitations of conducting research projects using digital platforms.
IAC Art Talks Series 2 Lecture One: The Accidental Collector by Dr Geoff Raby AO (Catch up Online)[[link]]
Dr Geoff Raby AO is an economist and Australia’s Ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011. Dr Raby he assembled a collection of contemporary Chinese art which includes work from all media – painting, drawing, photography, performance, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and installations – and is a unique window on a particular time and place in Chinese and hence world art history. In this talk Dr Raby discusses how and why he assembled the collection and share stories of particular works of art and the artists that created them.
There is excellent Chinese art within public collections in Australia, ranging in date from the Shang dynasty (c 1700 - 1027 BCE) through to the present, and representing a wide range of media. Collections are extremely varied, reflecting a combination of formal acquisition policies and the specialist interests and ambitions of diverse curators, collectors, and donors. This talk is an overview of the strengths of different public art collections and the people responsible from the first examples of Chinese art acquired by a public collection —the National Gallery of Victoria in 1867 — through to the present.
Delving into the captivating works of Lin Fengmian and Sanyu, key figures in modern Chinese art, the renowned Chinese Australian artist Dapeng Liu reveals the tension and harmony between tradition and innovation and uncovers this intriguing segment of art history.
IAC Art Talks Lecture 5: The Secret History of Chinoiserie by Chris Chun (Catch up Online)[[link]]
In this lecture, Professor Wanning Sun shares her experience of doing research as a cultural anthropologist studying social change in China. She takes the audience to the site of her research and shows them what she has learned from talking to and interacting with some of the rural migrant workers who produce our iPhones. Her talk offers rare glimpses into the ways social and economic inequality impacts on rural migrant workers' intimate lives, their pursuit of love, and their ideas about romance.
Porcelain, with its historical pedigree and transcultural relevance, its material allure and anthropomorphic resonance, offers artists a unique way to move between the global and the intimate, the mass produced and the handmade, and the foreign and the domestic. In thia talk, Dr Alex Burchmore dives into this unique genre of ceramic art in search of a broader framework for contemporary Chinese artistic practice. Focusing on the work of four artists from the 1990s through to the 2010s – Liu Jianhua, Ai Weiwei, Ah Xian, and Sin-ying Ho – Dr Burchmore traces the extent to which the materiality of ceramics has been used to highlight China’s role in global trade and to explore the function of this medium as a vessel for the transmission of Chinese art, culture, and ideas.
Much has been said about Chinese paintings. In academic discourse, what’s often overlooked are the many untold tales of how art moves with people as a result of tremendous life events. In this talk, Yvett Klein, Asian Art Specialist from Bonhams, shares her chance encounters with many great paintings, whose artists include among others Yun Shouping (惲壽平 1633-1690), Wu Dongfa (吳東發 1747-1803), Pu Ru (溥儒 1896-1963), Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻 1895-1953), C. C. Wong (王己千 1907-2003) and Irene Chou (周綠云 1924-2011), along with the many stories told to her by their previous or current owners.
From the Modernist Storm Society in Shanghai in the 1920s, to Bohemian artist enclaves in the early years of Reform and Opening, and to a generation of global artists today, Chinese women artists carved out their space within a patriarchal artworld that tended to exclude them. In this talk, Dr Luise Guest focuses on the women artists in modern and contemporary Chinese art.
IAC Art Talks Inaugural Lecture: Identity, Position, Presence by Dr Guan Wei (Catch up Online)[[link]]
Dr Guan Wei came to Australia in the early 1990s when Australia was actively engaging with countries in Asia. A review of his artistic creation during that period shows that the themes of his works ranged from the integration of Eastern and Western Arts to environmental protection to Australian politics and history and various aspects of Australian society. This change reflects the recognition of his double identity and his integration into Australian culture. This talk focuses on both his journey searching for identity, position and presence and also that of other artists of Asian backgrounds.