NVAEC 2019

Keynote Speakers

Sandra Jackson-Dumont

Jackson-Dumont is the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education at The Metropolitan Museum of Art—the largest museum in the western hemisphere. She is responsible for the vision and management of education, public programs, the live arts/performance, audience development and academic programs. Her work encompasses a wide range of experiences designed for a diverse cross-section of audiences. Known for her ability to blur the lines between academia, popular culture, performance, social justice, and non-traditional art-going communities, Jackson-Dumont is invested in curating experiences that foster dynamic exchanges between art/artists, past/present, public/private, and people/places. She was formerly the Deputy Director for Education + Public Programs and Adjunct Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Seattle Art Museum. Prior to her appointment at SAM, Jackson-Dumont worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art among other cultural organizations.

John Armstrong

Global Philosopher-in-chief for The School of Life which has branches in 11 countries. His latest book Art as Therapy was written jointly with Alain de Botton. Armstrong was born in Glasgow, educated in Oxford and London and moved to Australia in 2001. He is the author of nine books, including In Search of Civilisation, Love Life Goethe, The Secret Power of Beauty, How to Worry Less About Money and Life Lessons from Nietzsche. For five years he was Senior Advisor in The Office of the Vice Chancellor, University of Melbourne and in 2014 was a Professorial Fellow at the University of Tasmania. He is now based in Hobart and Italy.

Flossie S. G. Chua

Senior Research Manager and Instructor in Education at Project Zero, Harvard University. Her work focuses on understanding how we can nurture good thinking and practices that develop the capacity for informed and positive action. Her projects involve exploring emerging practices of progressive pedagogies in schools and the shared leadership structures in schools that support them, and innovative paradigms for visual artists and the arts to operate in relationship to their communities and the world. Flossie also collaborates with Independent Schools Victoria to research innovative learning frameworks that prepare students for our complex and dynamic world.

Anne Smith

Arts Learning Executive at Independent Schools Victoria where she works directly with a diverse range of education profiles and priorities to explore and expand the benefits of Arts Education through school based and community programs. Anne has initiated and developed a wide range of programs and partnerships with galleries, museums and universities to create opportunities for arts rich interdisciplinary learning. Anne is the artistic director of Independent Schools Victoria’s Arts Learning Festival, a biennial event staged in Melbourne’s arts precinct. Anne has collaborated on research projects with Project Zero, Harvard University and to further expand awareness and commitment to the importance of the Arts.

Banner image: Sally Smart The choreography of cutting (the pedagogical puppet projects) 2012–15 (detail), synthetic polymer paint, conte crayon, oil pastel and pencil on canvas and paper, fabric, wood, cardboard, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2016

Featured Artists

Ben Quilty

Ben Quilty is an Australian painter known for his vibrant and broad brushstrokes. He has a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts and has completed studies in Aboriginal history and culture at Monash University and a Bachelor of Visual Communication from the University of Western Sydney. Quilty is a renowned portrait artist and has won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2009 with a portrait of Jimmy Barnes, and the Archibald Prize in 2011 with a portrait of Margaret Olley. The Australian War Memorial commissioned Quilty as an official war artist in Afghanistan, and he also recently curated ‘Home: Drawings by Syrian Children’. His work is held in both state and private collections around Australia.

Sally Smart

One of Australia’s leading contemporary artists recognised internationally for large-scale cut-out assemblage installations and performance and video, Sally Smart's practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture including trans-national ideas that have shaped cultural history. In her recent project The Choreography of Cutting she re-imagines and encapsulates a dynamic discourse between the historical and contemporary avant-garde using experimental performance, costume design and visual art forms. Smart is represented in significant public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the USA.

Lisa Reihana

Lisa Reihana is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice examines the representation of history. The subjects of her portraiture inhabit a world in which past, present, and future are mutable; and where identities are unfixed and transgress expectations of social norms. Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with the largescale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015–17). Her filmed vignettes populate a neo-classical French wallpaper, Les Sauvages de la mer Pacifique. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Auckland University and a Master of Design at Unitec Institute of Technology. In 2014 she was awarded an Arts Laureate Award by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, and in 2018 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Keg de Souza

Keg de Souza is an Australian artist working between the disciplines of architecture, food, film, mapping and dialogical projects to explore the politics of space, influenced by her formal training in architecture and experiences of radical spaces through squatting and organising. She often creates site- and situation- specific projects with people, emphasising knowledge-exchange. Recent exhibitions include Common Knowledge and Learning Curves, Art Space, Sydney, 2018; The National, AGNSW, 2017; and the 20th Biennale of Sydney and the Setouchi Triennale, Japan, in 2016. She has undertaken numerous residencies in Australia and overseas.

Gavin Rogers

Gavin Rogers is a socially engaged artist and educator currently living and working in the UK. His practice is situated from performance to sculpture, but his main media is people. He works with schools, communities, universities and local arts organisations to bring challenging subjects and conversation to life, subjects such as migration, gender politics and alcoholism. He does this by creating opportunities, projects, spaces and environments that allow people to explore art making alongside their politics. He believes in storytelling—not just telling, but also the listening.

Lucy Irvine

Lucy Irvine is an artist and educator. Commencing a practice-led PhD at the Australian National University in 2016, she is developing spatially, temporally and materially emergent strategies that can engage and participate across art, design, architecture and geography discourses. Lucy has presented workshops at the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art and ANU. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the NGV and Melbourne Museum, and was selected to represent Australia at the the 15th International Triennial of Tapestry, Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, Poland.