Announcing a new lecture series

The Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline will be collaborating with Gertrude Contemporary to present a series of lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. The guest lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds. The lectures will be held at Gertrude Contemporary throughout 2013 and are free of charge. 

The first lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Rex Butler. ‘John Nixon: A Communist Artist’ will examine the work of Melbourne-based abstract artist John Nixon who has been the subject of much discussion over the past twenty years. He has been lauded for continuing the radical experiments of Russian constructivism, criticised for not being truly experimental, and positioned as continuing an avant-garde tradition that somehow brings together the monochrome and the readymade. In his paper, soon to be published in the journal Discipline, Rex Butler reads Nixon’s work through the writings of art critic Boris Groys to suggest that it is—of all things—communist. 

Rex Butler teaches in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland, specialising in contemporary and Australian art. He is currently working on a book on Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? 

FIRST LECTURE: THURSDAY 11 APRIL, 2013, 6PM FOR 6:30PM  

 Rex Butler, John Nixon: A Communist Artist

This event is free. Bookings are unncessesary. 

 

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