Here in Southeast Asia we have many examples of artists questioning the ethics of the countries in which they live as well as the international communities, which influence their livelihoods.
In an upcoming lecture on ethical responsibility in art, Dr Turner will focus on contemporary Asia and the ways that artists can not only reflect but perhaps even change society in positive ways. Many contemporary artists in the Asian region have explored the effects of poverty, exploitation, inequality, war, violence, colonialism and neo-colonialism, environmental degradation, cultural loss, and political, social, gendered, racial or ethnic injustices. Artists have addressed their art to, and involved, whole communities, helping them to confront trauma (caused by both natural and human disasters) and to preserve traditions and values, thus contributing through art to cultural survival. The lecture also draws on themes from the forthcoming book written by Dr Turner and Professor Jen Webb: Art and Human Rights: Contemporary Asian Contexts to be published by Manchester University Press in 2014 in the series ‘Rethinking Art’s Histories’.
Dr Caroline Turner is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University. Prior to joining the ANU in 2000 she was Deputy Director of the Queensland Art Gallery and organised and curated many international exhibitions from Europe, Asia and North America. She was co-founder and Project Director for nearly ten years in the 1990s for the Asia-Pacific Triennial exhibitions (1993, 1996, 1999) at the Queensland Art Gallery and scholarly editor of the three major catalogues for the first three Triennials. Her books include Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific (1993), one of the first survey treatments in English on this subject and the more recent Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific (2005).
Dr Caroline Turner will deliver the third MA Asian Art Histories Annual Lecture on 26 March 2014
Wed: 26 March 2014 7.00pm-9.00pm
Block F Level 2 #F202 LASALLE College of the Arts 1 McNally Street, Singapore
Free admission (on a first-come first-served basis) RSVP: angie.wong@lasalle.edu.sg A reception will follow.
