How have contemporary artists, musicians, performers, writers, designers, architects developed their signature style? How have they developed their unique talent from family, cultural and educational contexts, and what has informed and influenced their artmaking from the past?
This unit invites students from across the arts and other disciplines to investigate artists, artworks and art movements to examine the many influences that have been brought to bear on contemporary Australian arts. In the arts, 'contemporary' is a broad term that captures the conditions of creative practice happening today. Those conditions include technology, diversity, interdisciplinarity, environment, politics, and society within increasingly globalised contexts. Contemporary also defines a relationship of present creative practice to that of the past, where history and the contemporary condition each other through tradition, transgression, and transformation.
Students will explore creative case studies to see how isolation from and exposure to other cultures have shaped artmaking practices in Australia over thousands of years; how waves of migration have impacted on culture and the arts; and how the work of earlier artists, their philosophies and techniques influenced their peers and continue to influence the next generation. The creative case studies will range across arts disciplines and cultural perspectives and will include Indigenous creative case studies from the Northern Territory.
