About the project
Promoting visual art & culture to the world
Cultural Conversations is promoting Australian and South Korean visual arts and culture to the world through the stories of its eminent artists told by the artists themselves.
At the core of the Cultural Conversations project are professionally filmed interviews. These interviews of up to 60 minutes are in-depth discussions of the life and work of pre-eminent artists, their voices, their stories, their insights and their characters preserved for posterity. Sadly, one subject already in the archive, the sculptor Bert Flugelman, has recently passed away, underlining the importance of preserving the voices of our contemporary artists for future generations. This archive is an irreplaceable primary source in the recording of our cultural history: an invaluable resource for everyone interested in our cultural life and for future students and historians.
Rationale:
The health of a culture depends on many things. But one of the most important is the connection between one generation and those who have gone before them. This connection brings a sense of belonging to the ongoing project which is art: reflection through an aesthetic prism on who we are as individuals and as a society.
This connection also helps mentor and counsel each succeeding generation, contributing to the education of young artists and promoting a deeper appreciation of our own art by the public.
Hence, the importance of documenting our cultural history. Certainly, this can be done in part by academic study, by print publications, by exhibitions and by collections in museums. But crucial to preserving our cultural heritage is the oral history – to see and hear artists talk about their work, their lives and their careers. In other words, to see and hear the artists tell their stories in their own words.
The video interviews which form the heart of the project take advantage of the new digital technology to show our artists in the context of their studios with supporting images of their work talking about their life and work.
Cultural Conversations represents an online record able to be accessed by educators, students, artists and the interested public and linked to other collections such as
Design and Art Australia Online.
About Dr Paul McGillickDr Paul McGillick has had an extensive and varied career as a writer, editor and curator in the fields of art, architecture and design. He is also the author of and a contributor to numerous books in these fields, along with many catalogue essays. He was for many years the visual and performing arts critic for the Australian Financial Review. For some years he was Series Editor and a producer and presenter with SBS TV's arts show, 'Imagine', later working for ABC TV's 'Art Show'. He has recently returned to video production with short films on residential and interior architecture.
About the Australian Centre for Oral HistoryThe
Australian Centre for Oral History is an initiative of
Turtle Lane Studios Pty Ltd applying Testimony Software to the field of oral history. The Centre is the home of this project as well as working with other oral history projects in Australia and overseas in publishing oral history material online.
About Adj. Associate Professor Yvonne BoagAssociate Professor Yvonne Boag, one of the principals of Turtle Lane Studios Pty Ltd, is an Australian artist with an impressive exhibition record in Australia, Europe, South Korea and Japan. She has held many artist-in-residencies and is represented in major public and private collection in Australia and overseas. She regularly exhibits in group and one-person shows. She has formed strong links with the arts community in South Korea and consults to organisations like Sydney College of the Arts of the University of Sydney on building and maintaining collaborations and exchange relationships. Her digital archive can be seen at
http://www.yvonneboag.com.au.
About Dr Bob JansenDr Bob Jansen, one of the principals of
Turtle Lane Studios Pty Ltd, is the technical director for this project. He designed and programmed the Testimony Software system used to deliver the interviews through this web site. He has over 30 years experience in the ICT industry in Australia and Europe, having worked as Principal Research Scientist in and Program Manager of, the Knowledge Based Systems Program for CSIRO, the English computer firm ICL, various international R&D organisations, and for the last twelve years, as a owner and consultant of Turtle Lane Studios. He started the Austrtaliasn Centre for Oral History, see above. He has consulted to the University of Alaska's oral history program, Project Jukebox, and completed a Testimony Software site for the Alaska Historical Society bringing excerpts of the original recordings of the
1956 Alaska Constitution Convention to students.
About CADRE DesignCADRE Design, is Australia's leading developer of innovative eLearning and interactive multimedia. They are providing the graphic design resources for this project and are currently collaborating on the final design of this web site.
About Cameron GlendinningCameron Glendinning is a professional videotographer having worked for a long time at the Australian Broadcasting Commission and more recently as a freelancer. Cameron is responsible for the technical side of video recordings of the interviews for this project as well as acting as the camera person/director of photography.
About William SturrockWilliam Sturrock has joined this project as a researcher and interviewer. William brings a younger perspective to this project. He is the manager of
Gallery 9 in Darlinghurst after a managing Australian Galleries' Glenmore Rd gallery.
About Victoria HynesVictoria Hynes has joined this project as an interviewer. She is a Sydney based visual arts writer, journalist and editor. She holds a Masters degree in Art History and Theory from the University of Sydney. She has worked as a visual arts columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1999-2010, both as a reviewer and feature writer for the mainstream arts pages and as an art critic for the 'Metro' arts and entertainment supplement. Victoria was the Sydney Magazine's visual arts columnist for four years (2003-2007) and has also worked as Contributing Editor of ‘Asian Art News’ Magazine (1998-2002) and Deputy Editor of 'Australian Art Review' magazine (2003-2007). She has also written for prominent art and design magazines over the past decade, including: ‘Art & Australia’, ‘Artist Profile’, ‘Artlink’, 'Art Asia Pacific' and ‘Australian Art Collector'.
About Nick VickersNick Vickers has joined this project as a researcher and interviewer. He brings a wealth of experience in the Australian visual art industry to this project, He is currently employed with the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales.
About Emeritus Professor Peter Pinson OAMPeter Pinson, who has joined this project as an interviewer, studied at the National Art School and The Teachers’ College, Sydney. After winning the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1968, he travelled to Europe and undertook post graduate study at the Royal College of Art, London. As a painter, he has received numerous Artist-in-Residencies in Australia and Paris. He is the author of hard-bound books including monographs on Rodney Milgate, Emanuel Raft, Elwyn Lynn, and Bert Flugelman and an account of the late work of John Passmore. Between 2003 and 2006, he was President of the Australian Watercolour Institute. In 2004, after retiring from The University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts where he had served as Head of the School of Art, he was appointed Emeritus Professor.
About Adj. Professor Bob Miller AMProfessor Bob Miller AM is in his thirteenth year at Macquarie University, lecturing in marketing communications and business-to-business marketing. He is also a member of the Faculty of Business and Economics Dean’s Industry Advisory Committee. He was three times Past-President of AANA (Association of Australian National Advertisers) and the marketing industry recognised Bob Miller’s service many times. In 2010 AANA honoured Bob with its first “Phil J. Warner Award” for lifetime achievement and contributions to the Australian advertising industry. Marketing magazine declared Bob its inaugural "Marketer of the Decade". The Australian Marketing Institute awarded him its coveted Sir Charles McGrath Medal in 1993 as "Marketing Executive of the Year", the significance of which was acknowledged in a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, Paul Keating.
About Adele BoagAdele Boag, an Art Education graduate of the University of South Australia, has been professionally active as a teacher, printmaker, gallery director and international art dealer for the past 28 years. Adele joins the project to manage the extension of the project to incorporate South Australian creatives.
About Simon CooperSimon Cooper, a Sydney based artist, has practiced and exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally. His work is held in numerous private and public collections throughout the world including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, South Korea. He is currently the Acting Director of the National Art School, Sydney, where he has been Head of Academic Studies since 2009 and was Head of Printmaking from 2001 – 2008.
About Professor Colin RhodesProfessor Colin Rhodes, Dean is the Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney. His research is primarily in the areas of 20th century and contemporary art history and theory. He has written and lectured widely on Modernism, especially Expressionism in its many forms, and Self-Taught and Outsider Art. His books include the influential Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives (2000), which has also been published in Spanish, French and Finnish editions, and Primitivism and Modern Art (1994), which is also in French translation. He has a particular interest in the ways in which western art and culture has interacted with that of its perceived others, and in those cultures of production that exist in the margins of the dominant art world. He is a regular contributor to Raw Vision, Création Franche and The Burlington Magazine. He has a keen commitment to drawing and exhibits his own art occasionally. Rhodes' is Director of STOARC (the Self-Taught and Outsider Art Research Collection), which is based at the University of Sydney. STOARC consists of a growing study collection of Australian and international Self-Taught and Outsider Art, the International Journal of Self-taught and Outsider Art, and Callan Park Gallery, which has a rich public program of exhibitions of established and emerging figures within the field.
About Anders WotzkeAnders Wotzke is a freelance videographer and content producer from Adelaide, South Australia. After graduating from the University of Adelaide in 2010, Anders established himself as the Editor in Chief for the film review website Moviedex. Since then, he has become a lead developer at Etrain, lending his cinematic eye to the creation of interactive 3D training simulations. He also remains active in the Adelaide film community, working on a variety of short films and web series in his spare time.
About Paul J WarrenPaul J Warren is one of Australia’s most experienced Directors of Photography. With thirty-five years of experience shooting in the broadest range of cultures throughout the world, his portfolio is extensive and displays a huge variety of formats, styles and content.
His knowledge and ability to cross between the different demands of long form feature films, documentaries and short films is formidable. This gives him a rare and versatile approach for the many ways of finding the appropriate visual dialogue for the story at hand. After a very sound grounding in documentaries, current affairs and TV drama with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Paul left ABC TV in 1984 to pursue his independent career. Paul’s first feature film ‘The Cup’ was in Official Selection for the prestigious Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.
Supporters & ContributorsThe project gratefully acknowledges and thanks the following for their support and contribution to the project. Without their vision, support and contributions, the project would not be where it is today.
Nola and Alun Leach-Jones, for their financial contribution to the project
Emeritus Professor Peter Pinson OAM, for giving his time to do some of the interviews
Dr. Paul McGillick, for giving his time to assist in driving and steering the project as well as doing some of the interviews
Adj. Associate Professor Yvonne Boag, for her time in managing the steering the project, as well as her work in setting up opportunities in South Korea
Dr. Bob Jansen, for his time in managing the technical side and the back office functions of the project as well as managing and steering the project
Professor Bob Miller AM, for giving his marketing expertise to the project
Cameron Glendinning, for providing his cameraman skills and equipment to the project
Adele Boag, for giving her time in establishing the project in South Australia
Anders Wotzke, for providing his time and equipment in recording interviews in South Australia
Victoria Hynes, for her time as a researcher and interviewer
The Team at CADRE Design, for their expertise in designing the web site. We especially acknowledge the work of Melanie Halliwell, senior designer
Guy Warren, for interviewing Charles Reddington whilst on holiday
Paul Warren, for recording the interview with Charles Reddington, whilst on holiday
The Commonwealth of Australia Government through the Australia-Korea Foundation, part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, for their financial support through a grant in 2014
Korean Air, through the provision of reduced fare return air tickets to Seoul and an extended baggage allowance
Francois Saikally, for providing his cameraman skills and equipment to the project
Stacey Kim, for her transcription and translation skills for the Korean interviews
Who are our CollaboratorsWe have active and ongoing collaborations with the following:
Design and Arts Australia Online, we have a cross linkage agreement with them so their artist records will point to our interviews and our interviews will link to their biographical information for an artist.
http://www.daao.org.au
Do You Want to Donate or CollaborateIf you would like to make a donation to this project, please visit
http://www.cultconv.myevent.com. To collaborate with this important and exciting project, please contact
Dr. Bob Jansen, Adj. Associate Professor Yvonne Boag or Dr. Paul McGillick.
Copyright & LegalsThe content of this site, including video, audio and all images are used subject to specific copyright agreements with the various copyright holders.
We respect the copyright of others and we expect you to respect our copyright and the copyright of the various artists.
If you believe we have infringed your copyright, please contact Dr. Bob Jansen (email
bob.jansen@cultconv.com) outlining your concerns and we will make every effort to address your issues.