Art and Commemoration Symposium Report

Concept
This oneday art symposium was held prior to the three-day interdisciplinary Conference 'Commemoration, Monuments and Public Memory', 2-4 August 2005.
Speakers specifically addressed issues linking art to commemoration and discussed art practice, public memory, monuments and commemoration from the perspectives of art historians, curators and artists.

Marsha Meskimmon’s powerful keynote opening paper, 'Thresholds of Memory, Gifts of Imagination: Art and Commemoration' set the scene for an intense exploration of the theme of art and commemoration. Mary O’Neill presented a moving study of the personal within acts of commemoration in Ireland and Julie Gough an equally moving account of Indigenous responses to history and commemoration in Tasmania through her own art work. Kylie Message, Charles Merewether and Anne Brennan opened up fresh theoretical perspectives on the theme in analysing contrasting and complex contexts for commemoration. Grazia Gunn presented a penetrating analysis of German post Second World War artists and Helen Ennis’s paper was concerned with negotiating a relationship between private and public memory drawn from the research undertaken for her biography of Margaret Michaelis which had resulted in an important exhibition. Caroline Turner’s paper, ‘Commemorating, witnessing and public forgetting’, explored the concept of ‘remembering/forgetting’ through the work of Indonesian-born artist Dadang Christanto prior to a performance, ‘Searching Displaces Bones’, by Dadang Christanto, held during the conference with the assistance of the School of Art, ANU. This performance was filmed by CRIO (Consortium for Research and Information Outreach) staff Katie Haynes and Ursula Frederick and the subsequent film was shown in an exhibition in Brisbane in August 2005.

Speakers included:
Marsha Meskimmon, Loughborough University, UK
Mary O’Neill, Loughborough University, UK
Julie Gough, James Cook University, Queensland
Kylie Message, Australian National University
Caroline Turner, Australian National University
Grazia Gunn, Australian National University
Helen Ennis, Canberra School of Art
Anne Brennan, Canberra School of Art
Charles Merewether, Australian National University