Presented by Art + Australia
Su Baker, David Attwood, Francis Russell and Natalie Thomas discuss some of the themes explored in the edited collection The Art of Laziness: Contemporary art and post work politics, published by Art + Australia.
Speakers
Professor Su Baker is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Community and Cultural Partnerships, and also the Director of Centre of Visual Arts (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne. Su was the Director of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) for 7 years with over 25 years’ experience in teaching, research and senior management. Baker is a leading arts academic and artist, and has written on the shifting needs of arts education and the role of the art school in the 21st century.
David Attwood is an artist based in Melbourne. In 2016 he completed a PhD in art at Curtin University, and in 2019 completed the SOMA Summer program in SOMA, Mexico City. He has exhibited his work widely, both locally and abroad, in artist-run, commercial and independent galleries, as well as in off-site and online projects.
Francis Russell is the course coordinator of the humanities honours program at Curtin University. He has a PhD in literary and cultural studies from Curtin University, and researches the political and philosophical implications of mental illness, alongside conducting broader research into neoliberal culture. He has published in Cultural Studies Review, Deleuze Studies, Space and Culture, and Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy. His criticism has appeared in numerous contemporary art publications.
Natalie Thomas is a Melbourne-based artist and writer. She maintains an independent practice that considers storytelling as the basis of culture. Her work engages with the mass media and its role in how we see each other and the world. Her natty solo.com (one woman, one camera, no film) is an ongoing endurance performance project with an online outcome. The widely read blog uses the forms of the social page and social archives, and fuses gossip and innuendo with scathing cultural criticism.