This seminar is hosted by the Judith Neilson Chair in Contemporary Art, UNSW as part of the UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture Contemporary Asia-Pacific Visual Cultures Webinar Series. The series aims to foster a cross-institutional, international dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region by showcasing new research and thinking on contemporary visual art and culture.
Join us for a talk by Dr Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk (Manchester School of Art) and Dr Ming Turner (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan)
About the talk:
United in their interest in decolonisation and diasporic border crossings within a contemporaneous global art sphere, Turner and Kennedy-Schtyk will talk about their academic and curatorial collaborations exploring transnational East-West/North-South borders within art and visual culture. Their AHRC-funded project ‘Visualising Chinese Borders in the 21st Century,’ addressed the ways in which artists in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan applied art and design practices to consider, contest and visualise cultural and political borders within the Greater Chinese region. This led to the publication of Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West” Contemporaneity, co-edited/authored with Paul Gladston.
Ming Turner and Beccy Kennedy have worked on a variety of projects together over the past decade, including: the co-taught course An Introduction to East Asian Art at Cornerhouse Manchester; co-convening an ICAS 2013 panel ‘Visualising East Asia: Diasporas and (Post)digital Dialogues’ and co-curation of Pop-up Republics exhibition at Imperial War Museum North for Asia Triennial Manchester 2014, which explored issues of borders and belonging using the concept of shipping containers as micronations. ‘Culture, Capital and Communication: Visualising Borders in the 21st Century’ was a 17 month Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project, co-led by Kennedy and Turner (with Gladston as a named investigator), which investigated the political and aesthetic relevance of intra-Chinese borders upon art and design practice in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A series of five research laboratories and symposia will took place at art galleries and universities in Manchester (UK), Hong Kong and Tainan (Taiwan), culminating in a summative conference at Manchester Metropolitan University in spring 2016, leading to the publication of Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West” Contemporaneity, co-edited with Paul Gladston, Palgrave (2021-2).
About the speakers:
Dr Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk is Senior Lecturer in Art History & Curating at Manchester School of Art. She has curated for Asia Triennial Manchester and written in the field of Culture Studies, with a focus on Diaspora, Border Studies, East Asian art in Britain and the post-colonial Gothic. She was a research investigator (spring 2022) on Wadi Walks: Cities can Dream, a collaborative game art project, with artists Brigitte Jurack and Adele Myers (Fujairah Women's Campus, Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE), supported by British Council UK-UAE Cultural Professionals Connect Grant. Recent publications include: (forthcoming 22 April 2022) Imaging Migration in Post-war Britain: Artists of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese Heritage, London: Routledge; co-editor – with Paul Gladston and Ming Turner (2021) Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of “Post-West” Contemporaneity, London: Palgrave Macmillan, and ‘ 'Woah there a moment. Time out!': Slowing Down in Clear: A Transparent Novel,’ in Berthold Schoene (ed) (2020) Nicola Barker: Critical Essays, Canterbury: Gylphi.
Dr Ming Turner is Associate Professor in the Institute of Creative Industries Design, and Director of Visual Arts at the Art Center, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. She has published widely in both English and Chinese and has curated a variety of projects and exhibitions internationally. Her recent book-length publications include The Art of Contemporary Curation and Its Realisation: Body, Gender and Technology (2018), and Crossing Borders: Transition and Nostalgia in Contemporary Art (2015). She is also a renowned curator and has completed more than 30 exhibitions, both in Taiwan and internationally, including Next Art Tainan (10 galleries in Tainan, 2018 and 2019), L.A.B: 2018 NCKU Bi2ennial – Technology and Art (NCKU Art Gallery, 2018-2019),Bodyscape: Patricia Piccinini (Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art, 2016), Surface Epidermis: Phil Sayers (Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, 2015),Pop-up Republics (Asia Triennial Manchester, UK, 2014) and Post-humanist Desire (MOCA Taipei, 2013-2014).
Image caption: Detail of book cover of Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of ‘Post-West’ Contemporaneity (2021), edited by Gladston, Paul, Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk and Ming Turner, and published by Palgrave Macmillan.
