University of Tasmania, Australia

ArtsForum is a series of free public lectures held at the University of Tasmania's School of Visual and Performing Arts, in the Inveresk Cultural Precinct. Students and members of the public are welcome to attend. Lectures are presented by staff, visiting scholars from Tasmania, mainland Australia and overseas, industry professionals and artists-in-residence.

'Distinctly Australian? Design since the 1960s'

The question as to whether there is a distinctly Australian design aesthetic, process or even aspiration has recurred regularly since the 1860s when the combined disruptive effect of gold, free immigration and the end of convictism threw doubt on the utopic views of a distinctive new society previously espoused by the earliest capitalist colonisers of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.

In this talk design will be presented as amalgam of process, material and ways of being in a particular place and time, framed through the vernacular, regionalism and globalism. Starting with the post-World War 2 shifts in allegiances that were most explicitly expressed from the late 1950s-early 1960s, such disparate sources as Qantas, timber chairs, and the culture of leisure will be brought together to look at some of the shifts in design practice related to what might currently be understood as Brand Australia.

For further information about the School of Visual and Performing Arts click here