Reading the City: Art on the City

Across March we’ll be Reading the City; shining a light on the many ways we understand and talk about Melbourne itself. From the city as an abstract concept to the physical landscape in all its permutations, we’ll be hearing from visual artists and architects, policy makers and designers, novelists and historians. The City of Literature becomes the focus, and you’ll never read it the same way again.
Art on the City
Chaired by Chris McAuliffe, Harriet Edquist, David Hansen, Cat Poljski and Jan Senbergs discuss how artists go about interpreting the city. What are the challenges of depicting Melbourne through art? How do they see the city as an imaginative space?
Featuring

Dr Chris McAuliffe is Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at The University of Melbourne. Prior to that he was for ten years a lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. Dr McAuliffe has researched and written extensively in the area of contemporary art, and is the ... Read more

Jan Senbergs is an artist who lives in Melbourne and has held regular one-man exhibitions since the early 1960s. His work is displayed in galleries around the world from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, to the National Gallery in Washington DC. He has exhibited extensively in Europe, Jap... Read more

Cat Poljski is a printmaker who works from her studio on Lygon Street and has just returned from New York City where she continues to “Trace Space”. Her recent exhibition at Jenny Port Gallery in Richmond reflected the urban encounters experienced in Melbourne and Beijing, after a residency with... Read more

Harriet Edquist is Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University. She has published extensively on Australian architecture, art and design with a particular focus on the 20th century and has pioneered studies on émigré architects in Melbourne and th... Read more

David Hansen has worked as a regional gallery director, a State museum curator and an art auction house researcher and specialist; in 2014 he was appointed Associate Professor at the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the Australian National University. With over 35 years’ experience in the... Read more
Watch, Listen, Read

Listen
Evelyn Araluen: the 2022 Stella Prize Winner in Conversation
7 Jul 2022

Listen
Country: Future Fire, Future Farming
6 Jul 2022

Watch
The Coal Conundrum: A Hypothetical
4 Jul 2022

Listen
The Maternal Question
22 Jun 2022

Read
Hot Desk Extract: three approaches to mem*ry
20 Jun 2022

Watch
Reading with Consent
14 Jun 2022