In Search of the Never-Never

Mickey Dewar made a profound contribution to the history of the Northern Territory, which she performed across many genres. She produced high‑quality, memorable and multi-sensory histories, including the Cyclone Tracy exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the reinterpretation of Fannie Bay Gaol. Informed by a great love of books, her passion for history was infectious. As well as offering three original chapters that appraise her work, this edited volume republishes her first book, In Search of the Never-Never. In Dewar’s comprehensive and incisive appraisal of the literature of the Northern Territory, she provides brilliant, often amusing insights into the ever-changing representations of a region that has featured so large in the Australian popular imagination

In Search of the Never-Never

Mickey Dewar made a profound contribution to the history of the Northern Territory, which she performed across many genres. She produced high‑quality, memorable and multi-sensory histories, including the Cyclone Tracy exhibition at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the reinterpretation of Fannie Bay Gaol. Informed by a great love of books, her passion for history was infectious. As well as offering three original chapters that appraise her work, this edited volume republishes her first book, In Search of the Never-Never. In Dewar’s comprehensive and incisive appraisal of the literature of the Northern Territory, she provides brilliant, often amusing insights into the ever-changing representations of a region that has featured so large in the Australian popular imagination

Evaluating the importance of the Crown Film Unit, 1940 – 1952

The Crown Film Unit (CFU) was the British Government’s principal in-house film production facility during the years 1940 to 1952. Over this period it produced around 225 films of different types and lengths ranging from short five minute Public Information Films to feature length cinema exhibited pictures. A very few of the latter, such as Target for Tonight (1941) or Fires Were Started (1943) have become iconic representations of both the bomber offensive and the Blitz during the Second World War. Although these films only represented a very small percentage of the CFU’s entire catalogue they have, in the main, dominated academic discourse about the Unit. This research has sought to explore the full production canon of the CFU and, in particular, to examine its importance and legacy. In doing so it has also engaged with the debates about the role of film propaganda especially as it impacted upon the self-image and morale of the British people during and after the War. It also examines the role and position of the Unit in the development and history of the Documentary Movement. To achieve these research aims the Crown Film Unit is first situated in its historical context and the influences of its predecessors over the previous forty or so years are examined. Subsequently a new classification paradigm is developed which allows the films themselves to be reviewed according to theme. Locating each of the films in a particular dynamic framework enables them to be evaluated from the appropriate social, economic, political or military perspectives. The films are also considered in the context of their reception which, in the case of the CFU was not just cinematic exhibition but also a substantial non-theatrical audience watching, not only in the UK, but across the world. The penultimate chapter examines the legacy of the CFU demonstrating that it had an important impact upon British and overseas feature film making in the 1950s, but it also made a currently undervalued contribution to the subsequent development of both Public Information, training, advertising and instructional films. The research concludes that although perhaps still best described as a Documentary Film Unit the role of the CFU was far more nuanced

The legible city: stories of place told through a typographic lens

This research proposes that the perspective of the typographer – namely the ability to see nuance and pattern – can offer clarity to phenomena beyond conventional letterforms. Framing the research through Nigel Cross’ proposition of a ‘designerly way of knowing’, I explore how a typographic viewpoint becomes a ‘typographic way of knowing’. My research centres on the capacity of this ‘typographic lens’ to uncover underlying narratives and connections to larger social systems including economics, politics and social history. My investigations seek to contribute new knowledge in developing and articulating the uses of this unique prism. My research begins with understanding how this ‘typographic way of knowing’ was initially formed during my pre- and early practice period, and the ways in which it was informed by discourse around concepts of the vernacular and designer authorship. Subsequent reflections map how the observationally based first decade of my practice gradually transformed into a deeper and more nuanced investigation of how typography can create narratives that reflect, express and critique – especially narratives relating to place. The typographic way of knowing uses these specific sensitivities to recognise underlying familial relationships between sets, patterns and repetitions. When these are articulated through storytelling they offer a capacity for critical engagement in matters that are often considered outside conventional design discourse. This process of reflective research has led to a greater understanding of my own practice, specifically its underlying knowledge base, its capacity for storytelling and its critical intentions. My investigations have also uncovered a steady evolution in the articulation of discourses larger than my own discipline through my own discipline. Whilst the reflection upon practice has continually informed and contextualised my thinking and analysis, it is through the making of projects during the candidature that this evolution has become most evident. An ultimately practical use of my research is that it offers a compelling model in how a typographic way of knowing can be used to develop and disseminate stories that contribute to an understanding of typography’s broader cultural significance

Provisional Realities: Live Art 1951-2015

This thesis reframes the history of live art as a mode of simultaneous production, exhibition and reception that emerged as an aesthetic form of new significance post-1945. In an attempt to complicate the existing terrain of interpretation, I present the history of live art as a mode of representation, and method of making, rooted not just in space but, importantly, in time. Over five chapters I trace a trans-historical dialogue between the neo-avant-garde and contemporary live art since the turn of the millennium. The thesis is structured around four temporal framings: the vernissage; the night; the stage, and the museum; four sites of live production in which the live event emerged as a new aesthetic paradigm. In Chapter One I deploy the vernissage as a discursive framework and focus on two case-studies: Yves Klein’s Le Vide (1958), and Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio’s Cavern of Anti-Matter (1959). Chapter Two positions Group Zero’s night work as a key example of the post-war development towards live art, whilst Chapter Three underscores the transnational nature of that development in a study of the Tokyo-based collective Jikken Kōbō first work The Joy of Life (1951). The final two chapters examine the situational aesthetic and its strategic manipulation of the museum since the turn of the millennium through the work of Tino Sehgal, Tania Bruguera, and Roman Ondák. Central to the history I am tracing is the relationship between live art and the contemporary art museum. In an effort to expand the existing history beyond a narrative of consensuality or dissent, I propose a history of live art and the museum as active, rather than reactive and recast the relationship as dialogic in character rather than necessarily effective as institutional critique. I address the museum as a dispositif, a performative apparatus in its own right

Resolutely Inclusive: Merz Art Practice and Einfühlung

Through creative practice and exegetical writing this research investigates a possibility for continual engagement in aesthetic appreciation and a particular way of noticing that artists and viewers of artwork may share. Merz, invented by artist Kurt Schwitters, is a type of accumulative art practice that could include any material or method. Viewing and producing this type of artwork is examined via a theory of aesthetic appreciation called Einfühlung: a study of spectator’s embodied experiences with aesthetic works

Exhibiting the Past

With respect to public issues, history matters. With the worldwide interest for historical issues related with gender, religion, race, nation, and identity, public history is becoming the strongest branch of academic history. This volume brings together the contributions from historians of education about their engagement with public history, ranging from musealisation and alternative ways of exhibiting to new ways of storytelling

Feminist perspectives on curating

Curators and their partners are working in a contested field, in which the meanings of institutions, their power structures and modes of participation can be debated and reshaped. “To think of institutions in terms of production (of work and discourse and political practice and solidarity) instead of representation would be, to my mind, a first feminist step”. With this provocation the curator Ruth Noack invited us in 2013 to rethink the nature of feminist critique of the museum, the gallery, the exhibition space. Is access to the representational space of the museum a meaningful or adequate tool for feminism? Can such occupations mobilize sufficient means to reform the social function of exhibition? In recent years the role of the curator has increasingly become identified with “the new economic conditions that require new contexts of collaboration and interaction” (Olga Fernandez), conditions which are identified with celebrity and authority as well as precarity and casualization. What is the gendered nature of the power relations, effects, inconsistencies and contradictions of curating in the present? And how can feminism help us to rethink the role of the curator

Diversity in leadership: Australian women, past and present

This book provides a new understanding of the historical and contemporary aspects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s leadership in a range of local, national and international contexts. Overview While leadership is an over-used term today, how it is defined for women and the contexts in which it emerges remains elusive. Moreover, women are exhorted to exercise leadership, but occupying leadership positions has its challenges. Issues of access, acceptable behaviour and the development of skills to be successful leaders are just some of them. Diversity in Leadership: Australian women, past and present provides a new understanding of the historical and contemporary aspects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s leadership in a range of local, national and international contexts. It brings interdisciplinary expertise to the topic from leading scholars in a range of fields and diverse backgrounds. The aims of the essays in the collection document the extent and diverse nature of women’s social and political leadership across various pursuits and endeavours within democratic political structures