French Australian Artistic Encounters: Visions croisées

The papers in this Symposium build on the considerable evidence in recent exhibitions of the mutual interest and reciprocal influences that characterise the fields of French and Australian art, and take an innovative, comparative approach to the works of contemporary artists in each country, as they confront some of the major challenges of the world today: climate change; the Anthropocene; overconsumption and waste; posthumanism...

Last year the major exhibition ‘Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890–1940’ celebrated the works of the many women who made the artistic pilgrimage to Europe, and especially France, in the early 20th century. 2025 also saw the exhibition at the National Gallery in Canberra of the works of Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar; both artists were amongst those who lived and studied in France. This Symposium extends our understanding of the impact of such exchanges on the artistic movements in each country, their cross-fertilisation, as artists grappled with the challenge of representing the world of the early 20th century.

Keynote: Dr Victoria Souliman from the Department of French and Francophone Studies, author of the recently published Australian Women, Art and the Interwar Years: Migration and Identity, will present the keynote paper:

Rediscovering Cultural Intermediaries:  Australian Women and Transnational Artistic Exchange