|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
Reframing Darwin: evolution and art in Australia
12 Aug 2009 to 01 Nov 2009
Guest Curator: Professor Jeanette Hoorn, School of Culture and Communication
Developed and curated by celebrated scholar and art historian Professor
Jeanette Hoorn from the University of Melbourne, the show traced
Darwin’s impact from the voyage of HMS Beagle to contemporary
engagements with ideas of the post-Darwinian body. The exhibition
offered a tangible vision of Sydney and Bathurst as Darwin encountered
it on his arrival. Re-imagined through the artworks of Conrad Martens,
Augustus Earle and Syms Covington—Darwin’s friends and companions
aboard the Beagle—the exhibition was a visual panorama of the
material history as well as the artistic legacy left by Darwin’s visit
to Australia.
Taking up the thematic thread of Darwinian evolution, the exhibition
moved to an exploration of the impact of Darwin’s theory on
nineteenth-century artists, and in particular the lasting legacy of
Darwin in Melbourne. With the publication of 'On the origin of species'
in 1859, Darwin was revealed to a global community as the century’s
foremost scientific mind. Following in the historical wake of the
revolutionary implications of Darwin’s publication, the exhibition
brought together rare and never before seen works of art from more than
twenty-five institutions and private collectors across Australia and
united them with the local histories and stories of this great
thinker’s impact on nineteenth-century Australian artistic, scientific
and intellectual life. Artists Thomas Bock, Louisa Anne Meredith and
John Gould in Tasmania, joined with the University of Melbourne’s Baldwin
Spencer, Melbourne artist Tom Roberts and those involved in the
‘Gorilla debates’ then being waged amongst Melbourne’s intelligentsia,
to explore the impact on nineteenth-century artistic practice of the
vexed question raised by Darwin of the nature of human origins and the
evolution of species.
In an entirely unique innovation, the exhibition concluded by linking
historical and contemporary artworks to this shared thematic tradition.
Through the work of contemporary Australian artists, the exhibition extended the
legacy of Darwinian thinking to a consideration of pressing
contemporary questions on the nature of genome technology, paradise
engineering, the continuing significance of natural selection, and our
contemporary relationship to notions of a ‘natural’ body. Offering a
means of generating dialogue between different times and places,
artists, and artworks, 'Charles Darwin in Australia' seeks to challenge
and reveal the changing nature of artistic engagements with Darwin’s
works in Australia.
The exhibition was accompanied by a major book published by the Miegunyah Press.
Related Downloads
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
