2009 AAANZ Conference Abstracts - The Art Association of Australia ...

in the late 60s. The paper looks at some of the implications for
artists and viewers who step into (or through) the looking glass
and considers their reverberations between the 1960s and now.
Ann Stephen is Senior Curator, Sydney University Art Gallery &
Art Collection.
5. On Ian Burn’s Late Reflections
Dr Andrew McNamara
Ian Burn’s account of Conceptual art in the 70s fuelled the
suspicion it denied sensuous perception. Conceptual Art,
he explained to an Australian readership in 1970, “replaces
the customary visual object with arguments about art,”
and it even “isolates ‘the art’ from the form of presentation
altogether.” Such an argument fails to explain why art should
evoke visual perception and it also fails to explain why such
art should seek to estrange such perception while evoking it.
In fact, one would need to wait until the early 1990s for Burn
to produce his most convincing and vivid account of this art
and its legacy, as well as why such art sought to stall a viewer’s
perception in the very act of perception. In fact Burn’s own art
poses the question: how do we respond to the untoward, to that
which is elicited from within the depths of our most considered
reflections, our most automatic or well-attuned responses
Andrew McNamara teaches Art History at Queensland
University of Technology.
6. Expanded Painting: Helio Oiticica’s Parangoles & Bolides
Francesca Martaraga
This paper addresses the idea of “expanded painting” as one
response to the crisis of modernist painting in the 1960s. In
particular, I examine the work of Brazilian artist, Helio Oiticica.
Oiticica developed his expanded paintings by extending his
investigation of colour beyond the canvas, creating concrete
objects that required participatory action. The paper focuses on
his Bolides and Parangolés series.
Francesca Mataraga is a PhD student in the School of Art,
UNSW.
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