Contemporary Australian Cultural Practices

This field of research will bring together current and new work across the following areas: literary studies, creative writing, theatre and performance studies, cinema, television, visual art, dance, publishing, new media, and social media. The aim is to develop and disseminate a sophisticated sense of contemporary cultural forms and practices in Australia, informing Australians’ sense of their relationship to the nation and the world.

Cultural practices in Australia

Cultural practices provide one key site for Australians to engage with issues that are significant to the nation and to national identity. Understanding the contribution of the cultural sector to new ways of being, identifying and representing Australia, both to itself and internationally, is vitally important to the vision of the nation.

Contemporary Australian Cultural Practices research publications

Professor Rachel Fensham, Linda Barwick, Jakelin Troy, Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker, Tiriki Onus et al.

This ARC Discovery Project (2018-2021) aims to reframe a period of Australian history, the Assimilation era (1935-1975), to demonstrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ active intervention in public affairs through performances of music and dance. The project will collaborate with present-day communities aiming to construct an alternative history of cultural resilience and agency. Outcomes directed at academic, community and public audiences aim to better inform current debates on Australian identity, support the work of contemporary practitioners, build international networks and validate histories hitherto hidden at the heart of Australian nationhood.

About Professor Rachel Fensham

Rachel Fensham is Director of the Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts and a Professor of Dance and Theatre. She is lead CI on a ARC Linkage project investigating the impact of theatre for young people in regional Victoria, that has created CIRCUIT, a mapping tool for touring of theatre in Australia; and CI for the Humanities and Social Sciences Data-Enhanced Virtual Laboratory (HASS-DEVL) for the ARDC.

In all her research, the role and integration of methodologies from the digital humanities plays a critical role alongside other methods such as fieldwork, close analysis of embodied performance and community engagement. Recent publications include "Making and Assembling" in the Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods (2018) and ‘Research Methods and Problems’ for the The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies (2019).

Rachael Fensham academic profile

About Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker

Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker is Senior Research Fellow – ARC Daatsia Fellow, Indigenous Studies Unit, Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School Population and Global Health. He was born in Darwin and of Alyawarr decent from the Barkly tablelands region of the Northern Territory. Lyndon has been involved in advocacy, policy development, research and negotiations at the local, national and international level focused on Indigenous communities in the area of information technology, cultural heritage, materials conservation and repatriation.

Lyndon Ormond-Parker academic profile

About Tiriki Onus

Tiriki Onus is a Yorta Yorta man, lecturer In Indigenous Arts and Culture, and Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, University of Melbourne. He is a successful visual artist, curator, performance artist and opera singer.

Tiriki Onus academic profile

Anthony White, Professor Charles Green, Grace McQuilten

This ARC Discovery Project (2018-2020) aims to produce an understanding of outsider artists, their lives, their histories, and the socio-historic context in which they made their work. “Outsider artists” includes artists experiencing incarceration, disability, mental illness and other forms of marginalisation. Integration of their work will lead to a deeper understanding of mainstream art in Australia to paint a richer, more complex picture of the history of Australian art. The project will alter the perspective of arts policy and agencies, and of Australian artists themselves.

About Professor Charles Green

Charles Green is Professor of Contemporary Art in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Author of Peripheral Vision (Craftsman House, 1996) and The Third Hand (U Minnesota Press, 2001), he published a history of biennials in contemporary art, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta: The Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), with Associate Professor Anthony Gardner (Oxford University), assisted by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.

Green is one of Australia’s foremost art historians in the area of contemporary international and Australian art, and an authority on biennials, on artist collaborations and on artist teamwork. He is also a well-known artist working always in collaboration with Lyndell Brown since 1989. His research has been supported by a stream of ARC (3 Discovery Projects), Australia Council (5 grants) and other grants and fellowships. He has published 4 widely-praised books, edited 6 books, published 36 book chapters, 18 journal articles and more than 200 essays and reviews in professional journals world-wide, including the world’s leading art journal, Artforum. He has co-edited Australia’s peak art history journal. As an artist he has held 40 solo exhibitions and has been included in 45 curated exhibitions at many of Australia’s leading public art museums.

Charles Green academic profile

Associate Professor Mark Davis, Dr Elizabeth Driscoll, Dr Sybil Nolan, Emmett Stinson

This ARC funded Discovery Project (2017-2019) aims to investigate the effect of digital technologies on taste-making in Australian literary culture. The project will examine how digital media and platforms such as eBooks, online forums, blogs and social media have changed how Australian literature is produced, distributed and consumed, and what this means for the future of Australian literature. The project expects to understand the effect of digital practices on Australian literary culture, and support the continued development and cultural significance of Australia’s book industry in a globalised market for literature.

About Associate Professor Mark Davis

Mark Davis is Associate Professor In Publishing and Communications in the School of Culture and Communication at the Faculty of Arts. His current research focuses on the impact of digital media on public culture and has two strands: extreme online discourse, and Australian digital literary cultures and taste making. He also research media representations of young people and their use of media for political resistance.

Mark Davis academic profile

About Dr Sybil Nolan

Sybil Nolan is Senior Lecturer In Publishing And Communications in the School of Culture and Communication at the Faculty of Arts. She is an editor and historian. She lectures in publishing and communications, and researches in publishing, print culture and Australian political and media history.

Sybil Nolan academic profile

Professor Denise Varney

This ARC funded Discovery Project (2014-2016) addressed the question of Patrick White, a canonical but contentious novelist, whose contribution to Australian theatrical modernism is under-recognised. This new analysis of White that focused on his drama and the numerous theatrical performances of his plays from 1961 to 2012 aimed to develop a significant new narrative for Australian theatre that maps the journey from modern drama to contemporary performance.

Drawing on the considerable archive of reviews, photographs and annotated scripts, this study of White’s theatre aimed to re-assess the impact of Patrick White on Australian modernism and reposition his work within a twenty-first century context of reception.

About Professor Denise Varney

Denise Varney is Professor of Theatre Studies and co-director of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne where she has also served as Dean (2018) and Deputy Dean (2016-17) in the Faculty of Arts. She teaches Australian Theatre and Performance, and Modern and Contemporary Drama and supervises PhD students in the English and Theatre Studies Program.

Her research is in modern and contemporary theatre and performance with interests in: ecological theatre, theatrical modernism and modernity; feminism; performance affects; identity, gender and ethnicity; and theatre historiography and the archive. She has been lead investigator on three ARC Discovery Projects and contributed to other projects including AusStage. Her latest book is Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White: Governing Culture (2018) co-authored with Sandra D’Urso. Co-edited volumes include Performance Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times (Palgrave, 2017) with Elin Diamond and Candice Amich, and Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene with Lara Stevens and Peta Tait (Palgrave, 2018).

Denise Varney academic profile