Conference looks at edgy side of art and design
by Vincent Ciccarello
The furore surrounding Bill Henson’s photographs of a naked 13-year-old girl launched a passionate and very public debate about the ethical line art should – or should not – cross.
But other forms of artistic expression that involve putting humans under immense stress, body modification and even self-harm raise even possibly bigger issues about just what is ethical in art practice.
These issues will be discussed in Ethics for edgy practices, one of seven roundtable discussions at this year’s Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) three-day conference, to be held at UniSA from October 1-3.
Head of UniSA’s South Australian School of Art, Professor Kay Lawrence expects there to be a lively discussion around the development of appropriate ethics policy in university art and design schools.
"The annual ACUADS conference is always a lively forum for discussion about the current issues in art and design education, and I’m looking forward to the roundtable on ethics," Prof Lawrence said.
"Most of the ethics protocols at Australian universities have come from the sciences. But there are accepted practices in the visual arts that might involve pushing your body to the limit or self harm. The problem for an art school is how to exercise its duty of care to a student who wants to practice in that genre?"
The other roundtables include discussions on two Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded projects - studio teaching as a mode of delivery, and benchmarking the quality of PhD programs in art and design education.
"The art and design sector is really well-organised and probably at the forefront of grasping these issues," Prof Lawrence said.
"Studio teaching as a mode of education is a prime example of experiential learning, but it’s resource-intensive and there are higher costs that come with it. But without adequate resources, art and design schools have had to develop efficiencies in their operation.
"And long before the new Excellence in Research for Australia initiative and the Research Quality Framework, the art and design sector developed a range of metrics appropriate for art and design outcomes. The sector is currently liaising with other areas of the creative arts to expand the metrics."
As well as the roundtables, the first day of the ACUADS conference will include the opening of a significant exhibition of Indigenous artworks in the SASA Gallery. Shards is an exhibition of works by artists Nici Cumpston, Yhonnie Scarce and Judy Watson, who will also deliver a keynote address blood language art and research 2008.
In addition to the presentation of refereed papers over the following two days, the ACUADS annual report of individual and group research outcomes in the sector will be launched.
For more information about the ACUADS conference, visit the conference website or phone Karen Paris on +61 (8) 8302 0380.