Object(ified): Traversing Form and Space

Research Background The conference paper I delivered returned to re-evaluations of my academic basis in drawing practice. My paper engaged contemporary art practice/theory from the perspective of the discipline of drawing, and its evidenced return to imagist modes of perceptual drawing as the 'means to state' - through form and space drawing. Drawing's historic role as the skeleton of art, collided with postmodernism's return to imagist drawing and increased use of objects as avatars of purpose and meaning. There is a substance and shadow binary relationship in contemporary art between the collected object and its drawn 'ghost form'. Research Contribution My research contribution was as an art historian at this conference, delivering a significant paper investigating the role of the Art School in tertiary education, and shifts from studio space to virtual space in its location in art practice. My paper added to the discourse surrounding the role of Drawing within the Art School in Universities since the 1970s, and its impact in regional Australia, in terms of global art strategies. Research Significance The AAANZ conference (Art Association of Australia and New Zealand) was held in Canberra at ANU - Australian National University. Participants/speakers ranged from Australia and New Zealand predominantly - as evidenced at: aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2016-conference/work-art-2016-conference-program. It was widely e-published and publicized across the Australian University sector, and promoted in all media as a national and international level conference. Attended by over 200 international scholars, archivists, and historians, it addressed inter-disciplinary debates within not only art history, but transnational arts practices.