Celebrate the double launch of Future Souths: Dialogues on Art, Place, and History and Làm Chó Bò, Making Trouble. Join us for an in conversation with authors Verónica Tello and James Nguyen, facilitated by Dr Chari Larsson, followed by a reception.

Initiated and introduced by Tello, Future Souths is the culmination of an online dialogical project that began in 2017. Written by eighteen authors from the Americas, Australia, Asia, South Africa, and Europe, it radically reconsiders the bases and biases of contemporary art history and discourse. Future Souths proposes a fluid, collective, re-consideration of key art concepts from the perspectives and experiences of the Global South.

As well as offering exegetical analysis of Nguyen's own work, Làm Chó Bò examines a range of themes including institutional research culture and the politics of research ethics; the act of translation, migration, Australian settler-colonialism, and Indigenous land acknowledgements; cross-generational experiences of postwar Vietnamese diaspora; and the legacies of Vietnamese feminist poetry, including poetry by the artist’s mother, Nguyen Thi Kim Dung. The book features a foreword by Bundjalung, Kamilaroi, and MuruWarri artist and educator, Professor Brian Martin.

⁠

Accessibility

We are committed to making the IMA accessible to people of all abilities, their families, and carers, as well as visitors of different ages and different backgrounds.

The gallery entrance is on the ground floor of the Judith Wright Arts Centre, on Berwick Street. There is wheelchair access and an accessible toilet with baby changing facilities also located on the ground floor, and we welcome guide and support dogs.

If you plan to attend this event and have specific support needs we can accommodate, please contact engagement@ima.org.au, call (07) 3252 5750, or ask our friendly staff on-site. Read our access information for visitors here.⁠ ⁠

⁠

Guest Biographies

Verónica Tello is an art historian, writer, editor, teacher, and curator. Her research predominantly focuses on transnational art histories — and their archives — in and out of Australia, Chile, the Pacific, and Latin America. Her writings have appeared in Third Text, Memory Studies, Afterall, and Artforum. She is a Sydney editor of Memo Review and editor-in-chief of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Tello is a senior lecturer in contemporary art history and theory at UNSW Art & Design.

Chari Larsson is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory at Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University. She is the author of Didi-Huberman and the image (Manchester University Press, 2020) and has been published in journals including Journal of Art Historiography, Senses of Cinema and Psychoanalysis, and Culture and Society. Her current research concentrates on the intersection of community memory, trauma, and the war in Ukraine.

James Nguyen works in Australia and Vietnam. His videos, installations, and actions offer a way to think more openly about the world. Ranging from the diasporic absurd to representational refusal, everything and anything is up for grabs. He has a PhD from UNSW (on broken translations), a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Sydney (on the cinematic body), a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) from the National Art School, and a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Charles Sturt University. He was a collaborative fellow at UnionDocs (Centre for Documentary Arts, Brooklyn, New York). He shows locally and internationally.