Teaching Staff

Art Gallery of South Australia

Christopher Menz
Director and Affiliate Professor
BA (Hons) Christopher commenced as Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2005 and has previously worked at the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. Christopher has curated numerous exhibitions on Australian and European decorative arts and has also published widely in decorative arts.

Tracey Lock-Weir
Curator of Australian Paintings & Sculptures
Most recently Tracey curated Art of Arnhem Land: 1940s -1970s, and visions of Adelaide: 1836-1886, and earlier exhibitions include the Possum Tjapaltjarri retrospective. Author John Dowie: a life in the round, Wakefield Press, 2001. She has assisted with numerous major Art Gallery of South Australia exhibitions. Her interests broadly range from Aboriginal art to South Australian colonial art.

Jane Messenger
Associate Curator, Prints Drawings & Photographs
B.A. (Hons) (Melb), MA (Melb). Jane has worked at the Gallery since 2002. She has curatred Images from the floating world 2004 and identity and desire. Contemporary Australian Art 2005. As the 2005 Harold Wright Scholar, she was studying the prints and drawings collection at the British Museum in 2005. She is also currently working towards a South Australian photography exhibition with Julie Robinson

Robert Reason
Curator of Australian Decorative Arts
BA MA (Auckland) Graduate Diploma (Melb). Formerly curator of the Shepparton Art Gallery and from 1997-2002 coordinated the Sidney Myer Fund International Ceramics Award. Curator of the Morgan Thomas Bequest Centennial Exhibition 2003 and 20th Century Style: Furniture 2003. Areas of interest include historical and contemporary studio ceramics. His current curatorial project is the life and work of Gladys Reynell, South Australia's first studio potter.

Julie Robinson
Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs
Julie has worked at the Art Gallery of South Australia since 1988. She has curated numerous exhibitions in the areas of Australian and international art including Fragmentation & Fabrication: Recent Australian Photography, 1991, Hans Heysen: The Creative Journey, 1992, Ann Newmarch: The Personal is Political, 1997, The Age of Rubens & Rembrandt: Old Master Prints from the Art Gallery of South Australia, 1993, Durer and German Renaissance Printmaking, 1996, Five Centuries of Genius: European Master Printmaking, 2000 and the 2004 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia, 2004. Her current project, with Jane Messenger, is researching the first 100 years of photography in South Australia.

James Bennett
Curator of Asian Art
James has worked at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Prior to that he was a cruator of South East Asian art and material culture at the Museum and Art gallery of the Northern Territory. He has recently curated Crescent Moon: Isolamic Art and Civilisation of South East Asia, and Yingarti Jilanara, the Art of the Tiwi Island.

Rebecca Andrews
Assistant Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculptures
Rebecca has a BA (Hons) (Melb) in Fine Art and is currently doing a MA by research (Melb). Before taking up the position at the Art Gallery of South Australia, she was at Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum as Guest Curator of the current touring exhibition Venezia Australis Australian Artists in Venice 1900-2000. She is also working on an exhibition on George French Angas, which will open in 2006.

Maria Zagala
Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs
B.A. (Hons) (La Trobe), MA (La Trobe). Maria's Master of Arts research thesis was on Italian Renaissance drawing practice. Her first class Honours degree was completed in part at the University of Califonia at Berkeley where she undertook an internship at the University Art Museum with the Curator of Twentieth Century Art. In her position as Assistant Curator of Prints & Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria for 8 years, Maria had wide ranging experience on exhibitions including the thematic shows Drawn (2005) and Grotesque: The Diabolical and Fantastic in Art (2004), as well as exhibitions on the work of Goya, William Blake, and Rembrandt. She commenced at the Art Gallery of South Australia in July 2006 and is currently working towards a South Australian photography exhibition with Julie Robinson.

The University of Adelaide

Associate Professor Catherine Speck
Coordinator, Art History Program
Catherine has wide experience in Art History and Theory having taught numerous subjects in that area over the years. Prior to taking up her current post, she was coordintator of the Art History and Theory Department at the SA School of Art, University of South Australia, and Research Degrees Coordinator. Her areas of academic expertise include modern and contemporary art, Australian art and feminist art.

In 1999 as a Robert J. Hawke Research Fellow, she completed much of her book, Painting Ghosts: Australian Women Artists in War Time (Thames and Hudson / Craftsman House 2004). Current research grants include an ARC Spirt Grant, The Samstag Legacy (with Professor Ian North and Associate Professor Rhonda Sharp) and an ATN Grant, Defining Nations: Women as War Artists in Britain, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and Australia. She publishes in both scholarly and arts industry journals including The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Art and Australia, Australian Feminist Studies, the Journal of Australian Studies, Object, Art Monthly on-line and Artlink. She was currently Chair of Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre Inc., serves on the SSABSA Visual Arts committee and is a member of the Adelaide Critics Circle.

Dr Lisa Mansfield
Lecturer, School of History & Politics
Lisa completed her doctoral dissertation on 16th-century French royal portraiture and comparative representations of Renaissance monarchy and masculinity at the University of Melbourne in 2005, which is currently being prepared for publication as a monograph. She is an experienced lecturer and tutor in introductory art history and theory and has a broad area of specialisation in the making, meaning and reception of European art from 1500-1800, which encompasses the (Italian and northern) Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical and Romantic art styles and periods.

Professor Ian North
Visiting Research Fellow, School of History & Politics
Ian is a prolific publisher. He has produced a number of ground-breaking books and articles over the years including his books on Margaret Preston and Dorrit Black, while his recent publications on how the revolution in Aboriginal art is reshaping Australian art are at the cutting edge of debate. In addition to publications, Ian's art work is held in numerous high profile national collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Dr Georgina Downey
Visiting Research Fellow, School of History & Politics
Georgina is a lecturer in the Graduate Program in Art History. She is also involved in convening the Internship Program. From 1998 she tutored and lectured at the South Australian School of Art within the University of South Australia and from 2000 she has undertaken a similar role in European, Modern, Contemporary and Australian Art Studies at the University of Adelaide. Her PhD "Reading rooms: domesticity, identity and belonging in the paintings of three South Australian Women Artists in Paris and London 1910s - 1930s", was awarded in May." Her areas of research interest are: the representation of domestic space in early modern art, artist's travel and the expatriate, art and gender, contemporary art, photography and mixed media.

After gaining her Bachelor of Fine Art (Photography) in 1988 at the South Australian School of Art she lived in London for nine years, working as a writer and gallery assistant for various arts institutions. Since her return to the Adelaidian fold in 1996, she has worked at the JamFactory Contemporary Craft Centre, South Australian Living Artists Week, written on art history and theory, and explored web-based art at the Australian Network of Art and Technology with Re-patriate. She publishes in both scholarly and arts industry based publications, including The Journal of Australian Studies and Broadsheet, and has presented numerous conference papers around the country. She is a member of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, and edited the AAANZ Newsletter between 1998 and 1999.

Other Institutions

A number of key experts from other institutions have given lectures in the Art History program in including:
Angus Trumble, author and former Curator of European Art, Art Gallery of South Australia
Dr Philip Jones, South Australian Museum
Pam Zeplin, South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia
Gary Hickey, University of Melbourne
Judy Annear, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Claire Roberts, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Milton Moon, Adelaide
Jane Hylton, Freelance Art Consultant
Sarah Thomas, Freelance Art Consultant
Dr Christopher Marshall, University of Melbourne
Dr Chiaki Ajioka, Freelance researcher in Japanese Art, former curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales
Chris Nobbs, Education Officer, South Australian Museum

Tutors
David Button, Japanese Art & Southeast Asian Art
Gaelle Clements, Japanese Art
John Videon, Southeast Asian Art
Maggie Fletcher, Australian Indigenous Art
Michele Lang, Australian Indigenous Art
Varga Hossieni, Australian Indigenous Art