SCAF – Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

In association with the exhibition Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese portaiture
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the National Portrait Gallery,
in association with ANU Australian Centre on China in the World presents

Art & Ethics

Saturday, 20 October 2012
3–5 pm

at Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
16-20 Goodhope Street
Paddington

RSVP by Wednesday, 17 October 2012
02 9331 1112 or bookings@sherman-scaf.org.au

A forum to discuss the ethical responsibilities of our engagement with contemporary art and to examine the social responsibility of art in relation to culture and society.

Speakers:

Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. She is Adjunct Professor, College of Fine Arts (COFA), Deputy Chair of the National Portrait Gallery Board, an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador, and a member of the Art & Australia magazine Advisory Board, the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee and the International Association of Art Critics. Dr Sherman’s awards include the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), Doctorate of Letters honoris causa (The University of Sydney, 2008) and Member of the Order of Australia (2010).

Dr Claire Roberts is a historian of Chinese art and curator of Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese portraiture. She has published widely on Chinese visual and material culture, and curated numerous exhibitions. Her most recent books are Photography and China (forthcoming), Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (2010), Other Histories: Guan Wei’s Fable for a Contemporary World (2008), and The Great Wall of China (edited with Geremie R Barme, 2006).

Shen Shaomin lives and works in Beijing and Sydney. Shen Shaomin studied woodblock printing in a centre for mass culture in Acheng and went on to set up the Acheng City Print studio. In 1984 he won an ‘Award for Outstanding Work’ at the Sixth National Art Exhibition. He moved to Sydney in 1989 where he lived and worked for a decade before returning to Beijing. In 2012 he launched a residency program for Australian artists in Beijing in partnership with 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.

Dr Thomas J. Berghuis is a Lecturer in Asian Art History with the Department of Art History & Film Studies; Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art & Archeology; and a Member of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, leading a research group on Cultural Policy & Heritage. Berghuis is currently working on a research project examining the positioning of unofficial/official art, and the art system in China. Berghuis is also a research team member on a collaborative research project connecting Art History in Southeast Asia with the Power Institute at the University of Sydney, the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, and research partners across Southeast Asia.

Ying Qian did her doctoral studies in Chinese history and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University, and is presently a post-doctoral fellow at Australian Center for China in the World. She has published extensively on Chinese cinema, visual art, and cultural politics, and is completing a manuscript on the history of non-fiction filmmaking in China. Besides academic research, she was for three years the curator for ‘Emergent Visions’ an independent documentary film program based at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. Her own documentary and short films have been exhibited and broadcasted in a number of countries.