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Cross Roads
Study Art in Australia
From the Pacific Ocean across the desert
to the Indian Ocean, Australia offers an extraordinary range
of natural environments and cultural experiences. Art Schools
in Australian Universities are conscious of their location
- at the meeting point between South-East Asian and contemporary
Western culture. Being at the intersection of these exchanges
offers emerging artists a diversity of cultural experiences,
including that of the oldest living Aboriginal culture, that
can inform and challenge preconceptions about contemporary
art and design practice.
Over the past decade, the world has begun to
take notice of the burgeoning contemporary art scenes in the
Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions, particularly their
fusion of established traditions and contemporary forms. The
work of contemporary Aboriginal artists from Australia and
the new generation of artists from China are but two examples
of this dynamic revitalisation of traditional practices.
Australian art schools have been closely involved
in this changing environment, due to our proximity and shared
understanding of the difficulties that have evolved from similar
colonial experiences.
Through major survey exhibitions such as the
Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane and the Artists Regional
Exchange in Perth, Australia has taken a lead in showcasing
these developments by providing a critically informed forum
where issues surrounding the work of these artists can be
examined.
As we move forward into the new millennium,
this experience is extremely important in providing a model
for contemporary practice that will accommodate and respect
traditional forms, whilst allowing for the necessary injection
of new ideas, new technologies and new modes of synthesis.
Being both distanced from the international centres of practice
and constantly in touch through new communications technologies,
visiting artistic programs and major exhibitions and events,
such as the Sydney Biannual, the Artist's Regional Exchange
and the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Australian art schools are
able to offer a critical perspective that is responsive to
current discussions, whilst maintaining a reflective objectivity.
Within this exciting environment, art schools
are providing alternate approaches and offering different
perspectives, growing from their own sense of identity. From
the west coast of Australia, facing the surf from the Indian
Ocean, and with its back to the desert -home of many of Australia's
indigenous peoples - to the east coast centres of Sydney and
Melbourne with their cosmopolitan mix of ethnicities; from
the tropical north of Darwin and Brisbane to the wilderness
areas of Tasmania, each art school has built its own individualised
program that focus on their specialised social and geographic
environment. As a result, each offers an extraordinary range
of experiences to stimulate and challenge visual arts practitioners.
Australia is also a multi-cultural community,
reflected by art schools offering a diverse range of cultural
backgrounds that both reveal and examine cross-cultural issues
related to the teaching and practice of art. As a result,
the educational environment is both challenging and supportive,
intellectually rigorous and sensitive to cultural differences,
responsive to new technologies and respectful of traditional
practices. This mix has guaranteed a lively and rewarding
cultural environment that is tackling the most significant
questions of our decade.
Through their close working relationships with
the public gallery sector, professional art organisations
and the commercial galleries, Australian art schools have
also developed a highly focused professionalism which has
greatly enhanced the employment prospects of graduates. The
community is increasingly recognising that visual arts graduates
are highly computer and visually literate, in a changing environment
that is increasingly privileging the visual. They are flexible,
adaptable, resourceful, self-motivating, adept at problem-solving,
and skilled in a range of specialised techniques and communications.
Significantly, most art schools are also relatively
small in scale, and while being part of larger cosmopolitan
institutions (which enables them to provide up-to-date technology
and access to excellent resources), they are also small enough
to provide the face-to-face contact that is an essential part
of studio-based instruction.
The twenty-six university art schools affiliated
through the Australian Council of University Art & Design
Schools offer prospective students the change to select the
school most suited to their needs. Through the ACUADS web-site
(found at http://acuads.curtin.edu.au/),
prospective students can survey the range of programs and
courses on offer, as well as choosing the most attractive
geographic and cultural environment from the rich diversity
available across the country.
With a range of courses from undergraduate to
Doctoral studies, in studio-based professional education in
art and design, and via a sequence of programs incorporating
both full-time and part-time study, as well as Study Abroad
and Summer and Winter Schools, students have ready access
to a uniquely local and consciously international education
in the disciplines of Art and Design.
Author
Associate Professor Ted Snell
Chair of the Australian Council of University Art and Design
Schools,
Head of the School of Art
Curtin University of Technology
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