After a number of voluntary retirements in 2018, ANU’s School of Art and Design welcomes a significant cohort of new staff that represents almost a third of its workforce.
Former Fellow of University of the Arts Berlin Alex Martinis Roe joins as the new Head of Sculpture and will continue her project To Become Two: a series of films, workshops, public events and a book, as a social history of the feminist practices.
Fresh from completing his PhD with UNSW Art and Design in 2019, ANU lecturer Peter Alwast takes over as Head of Painting. Peter has an extensive artistic career with over 17 solo exhibitions and in group exhibitions including at the Tate Modern (London), Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania), the Greater Taipei Biennial, Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane) and the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney).
Contemporary artist Baden Pailthorpe moves from UNSW Art and Design to take up position as Lecturer and Convenor Hybrid Arts Practice; Ella Barclay, whose work incorporates installation, sculpture, performance, electronics and moving image to map the terrestrial aesthetics of network architecture and the politics of information hierarchies, has been appointed as photography lecturer; Textile artist Lucy Irvine who is also completing her PhD at ANU joins as lecturer in Textiles; NiTRO contributor Amanda Stuart has been appointed as Lecturer Environment Studio and Foundation Studies and will be leading the Environment Studio Balawan courses; Sean Dockray, founder of the Telic Arts Exchange in LA and initiator of the knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and AAAARG.ORG joins as Lecturer in Contemporary Art (Sculpture and Spatial Practice); Beck Davis moves from Queensland College of Art Griffith University to take up a position as Design Lecturer and Contemporary Craft Studios and Textiles Coordinator, and will continue her work in awareness of the broader function of design as a method for shaping creative, innovative and ethical outcomes; Kate Warren brings expertise and skills as an independent artist and former Assistant Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne to her new role as Art History and Curatorship lecturer. She is joined by Keren Hemmerschlag whose specialisation in Victorian and Edwardian art and visual culture, and the many intersections and frictions among art, visual culture, medicine and science work includes research undertaken in the US and the Courtauld Institute of Art in the UK.
The school also has an extensive program of visiting scholars, artists and designers planned for 2019 including: Roderick Bamford (Ceramics), Gemma Smith (Painting), Amy Rueffert (Glass), David Walker (Jewellery and Object), Julian Laffan (Print media and drawing) and Nick Mangan (sculpture and spatial practice).