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The Meta-Geographies of Paper
Sydney Art on Paper Symposium

Introduction
Program
Speakers
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Introduction

10am-4pm, Friday 1 August 2003
Lecture Theatre, College of Fine Arts,
Selwyn St, Paddington

Since the advent of Paper in Europe in the 13th century this invention has gained immense political, economic and aesthetic prestige. Paper has great potential as Marcel Proust recognised when he described paper "with all its thin thickness". Paper is simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. The mobility and flexibility of this medium, its multiplicity of forms and finish, situates paper as one of the prime agents of exchange within culture. Even the rise of the virtual world has not supplanted the primacy of paper.

This symposium addresses contemporary ideas and practices that relate to the ongoing attractions of paper across a range of disciplines. Speakers will refer to collection and conservation, contemporary art and aesthetics, and the histories and new technologies associated with paper.

Program

9am Registration

9.30am Welcome
Ian Howard, Dean, College of Fine Arts, UNSW
Akky van Ogtrop, Executive Director, Sydney Art on Paper Fair

9.45am Introduction by Chair
Craig Judd, Manager of Education and Public Programs, Biennale of Sydney;

10.00am Keynote Speaker
Professor Dr Ulrich Krempel, Director, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany

Collecting Artworks as a Political Act
The Sprengel Museum houses one of the most significant collections of works of art on paper in Europe. Including the Kurt Schwitters Archive as well as more contemporary media, the Sprengel Museum has emerged as an important and lively centre for art and art studies. The museum is named after Bernhard Sprengel who started his collection in 1937, developing his collection in opposition to then current German Nazi-law acquiring hundreds of 'de-generate' works from local artists and collectors, as well as international dealers who sold seized German modernist art. Sprengel thus saved hundreds of works from destruction and the Nazi burnings. Professor Dr. Ulrich Krempel will discuss the political aspects of 'conservation' and 'collection' in relation to the collection in the Sprengel Museum.

11.00am Morning coffee

11.30am Curators on Paper

Martin Terry, Curator of Exploration, Australian National Maritime Museum
Exploration: The Art of Paper
How should a museum collect in the new millenium? The National Maritime Museum's brief is to collect a breadth of nationally significant maritime history. Illustrated with examples from the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Martin Terry will discuss how the 'new' institution collects historical material.

Lesley Harding, Curator, Victorian Arts Centre
Mise-En-Scène to Mise-En-Page:
Paper and the Gestural Act
The physical enactment of creative notions and ideas - the creating process - is a function of spontaneity or of cumulative experience, in varying proportions. When artists use paper as substrate it is a flexible and willing partner with a rapid response to touch. Drawing on work from the touring exhibition from the Victorian Arts Centre Art Collection, Act XII: new works on paper (29 July - 29 August, UTS Gallery), Lesley Harding will examine a number of contemporary responses to the medium of paper - the use of staging as a constructive and facilitating device in art-making, the 'memory' of paper and paper’s complicity in the gestural act.

1.00pm Lunch

2.00pm Artists on Paper

Phillip George, Artist, Head of School of Media Arts and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media, College of Fine Arts, UNSW
Scissors Silicon Paper
In this presentation Phillip George profiles and reflects on his own art practice, one that has moved from painting, printmaking, collage, digital imaging, interactive media and back to paper. The return to paper is explored with a new relationship to materiality. As George says, "Paper can't crash, but it can burn".

Dianne Longley, Artist, Lecturer, Adelaide Central School of Art
Thematic Intentions and Poetic Spaces:
Prints, Folios and Artist Books
A satellite exhibition of SAPF, Tracing the Echo: artist books and folios, 1978-2001 (Manly Art Gallery & Museum) is a retrospective of Longley’s work. According to Pam Zepplin in the catalogue for this exhibition, the artist’s book is a genre that embraces the literary and visual traditions to become more of 'a zone of activity'. Zepplin then aptly quotes Daniel Johnson in relation to Longley’s extensive practice: "Books after all, are extraordinary things: thoughts made visible, paper and ink sculptures of the mind, time and space made into words..." In this lecture, Dianne will highlight how she gives physical form to her ideas using digital and traditional printmaking processes.

3.30pm Close
Maisy Stapleton, CEO, Museums and Galleries Foundation of NSW

Following the Symposium all delegates are invited to visit the Sydney Art on Paper Fair at Byron Kennedy Hall, Fox Studios at the special concession rate of $8, including complimentary Fair catalogue.

Symposium speakers

Phillip George is an artist who lives and works in Sydney. His work has been profiled in 22 solo exhibitions and 60-plus group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Represented in public collections in Australia and Belgium as well as private collections here and overseas, his work has been included in international print and digital media awards. His practice can best be described as 'trans-media' in nature, ranging from painting to interactive installations.

Lesley Harding is Curator at the Victorian Arts Centre where she has worked for nine years. She has worked as a freelance curator in galleries in Melbourne and Scotland, and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Curatorial Studies and Master of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Lesley is in the final year of a PhD in Fine Arts, researching mid-twentieth century Australian mural painting and its cultural context. Since 1995, she has curated five exhibitions which explore contemporary art practice on and with paper.

Professor Dr Ulrich Krempel, Director of the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, has held various lectureships in Germany since 1977 and is currently honorary professor at the Hochschule für bildene Künste Braunschweig. Other posts include Collaborator at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Exhibition management at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf and German Commissioner for the Biennale in Sydney in 1994.

Dianne Longley is a print artist who runs an access printmaking studio (The Print Studio) and teaches at Adelaide Central School of Art. In 1998 she published 'Printmaking with Photopolymer Plates', a book about new, safe versatile printmaking techniques. Longley exhibits extensively including international print biennales and triennales. Her exhibition Tracing the Echo is currently touring Australia.

Martin Terry studied Art History at Sydney University, and then went to the National Gallery of Australia as Curator, Australian Art. He worked as Assistant Curator, International Prints and Drawings, AGNSW and since 1988 has been Curator of Exploration, Australian National Maritime Museum