We are pleased to announce the keynote speakers for The Material Image: The 8th International Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference at the Intersections of Art, Science, and Culture, which will be held at the National Art School from 1-3 November 2024.
Day 1: Professor Lisa Slade is the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History at The University of Melbourne. Based in the School of Culture and Communication, the Hugh Ramsay Chair was created by a visionary endowment from Faculty of Arts alumna Patricia Fullerton, the grand-niece of the famous Australian artist Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906). This role plays a critical leadership role in linking the academic program to the wider arts community and fostering public engagement.
Prior to this recent appointment Slade was Assistant Director, Artistic Programs at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2015-2024) where she lead AGSA’s artistic programs including the management of the Curatorial, Public Programs and Education departments. While in her leadership role at AGSA, Slade was awarded a PhD in Art History from Monash University in 2017 with her thesis, Curating curiosity: an antipodean doubling, deeply informing her practice.
Slade first joined the team at AGSA as Project Curator in 2011 and this role saw her curate notable exhibitions focussed on South Australian art including HEARTLAND: Contemporary Art from South Australia. Alongside former AGSA Director Nick Mitzevich and Nici Cumpston OAM, Slade worked with the South Australian government to initiate and develop Tarnanthi: Festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in 2015. Her curatorial initiatives also include Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour, the 2019 Venice Biennale presentation of Living rocks: a fragment of the universe, the 14th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object andthe national touring exhibitions Quilty, in 2019-2020, and Kungka Kuṉpu (Strong Women) in 2022-2024.
Day 2: Janine Randerson is an artist, film and video maker and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand. A strong thread in her research concerns art-based mediation in ecological systems, in collaboration with scientists, activist citizens and Tangata whenua and Tangata Tiriti. Janine is currently a curator of Te Tuhi’s programme for the International World Weather Network platform that brings artists and writers together on topics of climate change. She often works with environmental scientists, collaborating with urban meteorologists at the University of Auckland, satellite meteorologists at the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia) and climatologists at the National Institute of Environmental Research (Denmark) and NIWA in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022-2023). She is interested in issues of weather, water, ecological politics and art practices on whenua (land) and ecological art practice. Janine’s book Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art (MIT Press, 2018) examines artworks that offer possible engagement with our future weathers, while creating openings for immediate action in the present. She values and promotes Indigenous, feminist and gender non-binary approaches to ecology in her research. She is the co-host of the Auckland LASER talks (Leonardo Art-Science Evening Rendezvous).
Day 3: Christiane Paul is the Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Professor Emerita in the School of Media Studies at The New School. She is a leading figure in digital art curation who has received numerous accolades, including the 2023 Media Art Histories International Award and the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art. Her influential publications include Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003; 4th ed. 2023), A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, 2016), Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011), and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum, she has curated groundbreaking exhibitions, including Harold Cohen: AARON (2024), Refigured (2023), Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965-2018 (2018/19), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011), and Profiling (2007). She also oversees artport, the Museum’s portal to Internet art.