Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas is Honorary Professor at UNSW Art and Design and currently the Director of the Studio for Transdisciplinary Art Research (STAR) as the founder and series-chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference series 2010-2022. In 2000 he instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth 2002, 2004 and 2007. As an artist he is a pioneer of transdisciplinary art practice. His practice led research takes not only inspiration from nanoscience and quantum theory, but actually operates there. His current publication Quantum Art and Uncertainty (October 2018) is based on the concept that at the core of both art and science we find the twin forces of probability and uncertainty.

Thomas’s internationally exhibited research projects have been based on working with scientist’s inquiring in specific areas of physics. The current creative practice ‘Quantum Chaos’ artworks are based on experiments done in collaboration with the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, UNSW. Publications, Quantum Art and Uncertainty (2018), Nanoart: The Immateriality of Art (2013).

An archive of Paul's practice can be found on his website: visiblespace.com

Julian Goddard

Professor Julian Goddard has been an academic, curator, gallerist and artist for over 45 years. Recently he was Dean of the School of Art at RMIT University and previously Head of the School of Art and Design at Curtin University. Julian has established several important organisations including the WA Artworkers Union, PRAXIS (Fremantle) - that later became the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, the journal Praxis M, The Beach gallery and studios, the Australian Centre for Concrete Art (AC4CA) and The Bureau of Ideas. Julian co-directed Goddard de Fiddes Gallery for 20 years - a successful commercial gallery exhibiting nationally and internationally. As a curator Julian has made over 100 exhibitions. He has also published widely on Australian, Aboriginal and Concrete art including award-winning books, chapters, articles, papers and catalogue essays as well as presenting numerous conference papers including international keynotes. Julian has exhibited films, paintings, installations, performances and photography since the early1970s.

Professor Anne Graham

Anne Graham is an artist and academic whose research interests focus on an investigation of identity and space. She is particularly concerned with creativity and its role in the formation of identity and creates portraits of people, their histories, their environments and their spaces.

Graham achieved a Master of Art at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London UK in 1973 and during her studies worked with Professor Humphrey Spender researching The Mass Observation Archive (1937-Ongoing). Graham arrived in Perth in 1975 after travelling across land to India on a scholarship from the RCA. In India, she completed a study in the use of colour in Tanka Painting. She continued travelling in WA and NZ then returned to Perth in 1981 where she taught at Perth Technical College and later The West Australian Institute of Technology. Graham was fortunate in meeting other artists/travellers at that time, and in particular the members of Media-Space. In 1981, Graham joined Media-Space, at the same time as Allan Vizents who had recently arrived in Perth. The Media-Space participants engaged in practice-led research, taking on board the politics, the past and present histories of place and responding to this in their work. For Graham, The Mass Observation Archive research shared an ideology with Media-Space. This methodology and the ideologies of Media-Space has had a lasting impact on Graham and fellow Media-Space members, as well as fellow artists and students in Perth.

Graham later undertook Doctoral studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology; titled ‘Dialogues in Diverse Communities’ her studies were informed by the politics, ideas and activities of Media-Space. After moving to Sydney in1984 she responded to Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics propositions in her work. The French curator Nicolas Bourriaud published a book called Relational Aesthetics in 1998 in which he defined the term as: A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space, his ideas were very much in conjunction with Media-Space ideas.

Anne Graham has had a prolific career as an artist and academic and her work has been included in many national and international exhibitions, academic publications and collections. She has operated as a board member of Performance Space, Sydney, Art Space and NAVA and is now an active member of Modern Art Projects, Blue Mountains.

The roundtable and exhibition acknowledge the contribution of all the Media-Space members who changed the art climate in WA. 

Graham's work can be seen on her websites:
annegraham.info (early work)
annegraham.com.au (recent work)