Faculty of Arts School of Culture & Communication

Associate Professor Charles Green

Reader in Contemporary International and Australian Art

Qualifications

BA (VCA), BA Hons (UniMelb), MA (Monash), PhD (UniMelb)

Biography

Charles Green is an artist, art critic and art historian specializing in the history of international and Australian art after 1960, with a particular focus on photography, post-object and post-studio art. He supervises theses on international and Australian contemporary art, and on art after the 1960s. He teaches courses on international and Australian art since the 1970s, and has taught cinema subjects on vampires and on artists in film. He is specifically interested in helping students to develop research on art history (international and Australian art made after 1960) that is both theoretically-informed and involves close primary research.

Research strengths

In the past 20 years, Charles Green's research has covered the three areas of art history (on contemporary international and Australian art), artistic practice and curatorship. He has contributed to the understanding of artistic collaborations and contemporary international and Australian art through 2 major monographs, many chapters and articles, and through his own collaboratively produced art with Lyndell Green. A researcher in the areas of art history, artistic practice and curatorship, he is also a widely recognized art critic. His first monograph, Peripheral Vision (1995), was the first sole-author history of contemporary Australian art ("All interpretations of recent art will have to take up a position relative to Green's. The text virtually defines the Australian postmodern canon." (Nelson, Age). The Third Hand (2001) was the much-praised first international theorization of post-1960s artistic collaboration through the concept of artist teams' "third hand" and the explanatory power of changes in artistic authorship. He has written on globalism in art and new media, drawing on an ARC Large Grant for a history of post-1967 Australian art. He was Senior Curator of Contemporary Art (Adjunct) at the National Gallery of Victoria between 2001 and 2006, as co-curator of Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968-2002 (inaugural exhibition, NGV Australia 2002), of world rush_4 artists (opening exhibition, NGVI, 2003), of "2004: Australian Visual Culture," a 130 artist national survey, a collaboration between the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and NGVA, and of "2006 Contemporary Commonwealth," (ACMI/NGVA), a 22-artist survey of international art and new media. In all his recent projects he has sought to describe, analyze and provoke new discussion on the relationship of Australian artists to international art in the 21st century. In early 2007, Charles Green and Lyndell Brown (with whom he has worked as an artist collaboration since 1989) were Australian Official War Artists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Links

Editorial positions

Competitive grants / scholarships / awards/ fellowships

2007 Australian Official Artist, Australian War Memorial. Deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
2006 Arts Faculty Research Grant, University of Melbourne Title: "Art as Research" ($5,000).
2005 Melbourne Research Grant, University of Melbourne. Title: "The Atlas in Art from Warburg to Contemporary Video Installation" ($20,000).
2005 Arts Faculty Research Grant, University of Melbourne Title: "Moving Photography, Still Cinema" ($5,000).
2004 Presentation Grant, Visual Arts/Craft Fund, Australia Council. Title: "Exhibiting new work in New York " (co-researchers Lyndell Brown and Farrell & Parkin, 1 year project, $15,000)
2004 Gold Medal, Bangladesh Biennale, Dacca, Bangladesh (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; international prize in recognition of works of art included in the 2004 Biennale)
2004 Conference Grant, Humanities Research Centre, ANU (1 year project, $5000)
2003 University of Melbourne Industry Seed Funding Project Grant (1 year project, $14,700)
2002 New Work Grant, Visual Arts/Craft Fund, Australia Council. Title: "Transforming paintings into digital prints" (co-researcher Lyndell Brown, 2 year project, $20,000)
2002 ITMM Grant, University of Melbourne. Title: "Australian Art of the 1990s" (1 year project, $12,000)
2002 Arts Development Grant, Arts Victoria. Title: "Arcadia: the production of works using new digital technologies (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; 1 year project, $15,000)
2002 "Horizons" Parks Victoria Residency (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; 1 year residential research fellowship at Lower Plenty, Victoria)
1999 Travelling Fellowship, Australian Academy for the Humanities. Title: Artists Construct Artists: archival research at the Center for the Humanities, N.Y., Carrier Foundation, Paris (1 month travel grant, $2500).
1999 ARC Large Grant. 3 Year Project (2000-2002). Title: "A critical history of Australian art after 1968" ($102,000; Ref. No. A10007005)
1998 Small ARC Grant, The University of New South Wales. Title: "Artists Construct Artists: archival research at the Center for the Humanities, N.Y." (1 year project, $4500)
1998 Melbourne School of Graduate Research Thesis Writing-up Grant, University of Melbourne. Title: "Thief in the Attic" (stipend)
1998 Gunnery Studio Research Residency, Woolloomooloo. (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; 3 month research residency)
1997 Asialink/Sanskriti Residency, Delhi (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; 3 month research residency with $12,000 stipend)
1996 University of Melbourne Arts Faculty Travel Grant, University of Melbourne Melbourne School of Graduate Research Travel Grant, Fine Art Department Travel Grant. Title: "Thief in the Attic" (2 month travel research, $5000)
1995 Power Institute Studio, Cité des Arts, Paris, late 1995-1996 (co-researcher Lyndell Brown; six month research residency with $5250 stipend plus subsequently awarded Australia Council Travel Grant, $10,000)
1995 King's School Art Prize, Sydney (co-researcher Lyndell Brown, $15,000)
1995 Ian Potter Foundation Grant (funding to assist with publication costs of Peripheral Vision, $3,000)
1994 Australian Postgraduate Award (3.5 year PhD scholarship, 1994-1998; 6 months leave during candidature to take up Australia Council Paris residency))
1993 Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Western Sydney Nepean (co-researcher Lyndell Brown, three month research residency with stipend)
1992 Fellowship Grant for Art Criticism, Visual Art/Craft Board, Australia Council (1 year research fellowship to write Peripheral Vision, $35,000)
1989 Artist Development Grant, VACF, Australia Council (1 year project, $15,000)
1988 Winner, "50 Artists" Travelling Award, Melbourne (overseas travel stipend plus $5,000)
1973 Sir Lindsay Clark Scholarship, National Gallery Art School
1971 UNESCO AIEE National student award

Publications

Authored research books

Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970-94, Craftsman House, Sydney (1995).

Awarded a prestigious 1993 Australia Council Visual Arts/Craft Board Fellowship ($35,000, 1 year) to research this book and a grant from the Potter Foundation to assist with publication costs. The result was the first full book to survey the history of post-1968 Australian art. The book was widely praised in reviews and much used. Daniel Thomas, the doyen of Australian art curators, wrote: "Although too much a creature of his time to admit publicly an interest in aesthetic excellence, it shines through his text . . . . This book is ostensibly about Australia's place in an international movement, but it almost does something more interesting, because more localised, namely, establishes a canon of the best Australian art of the time... It's not quite what its title implies, but it's easily the best book on recent Australian art." ("Art at the End of the World," Art and Australia, 34 (1) (Spring 1996): 139-140.) Catriona Moore wrote a long and substantial article for Meanjin in which she said: "Peripheral Vision is best read as a number of discrete sidelong glances at the field from one of our best art critics or rather artist-writers. Green's commentary enriches a valued genre of art criticism, alongside the work of other recent artist-writers . . . . and as such contributes to an informed dialogue between Australian art, theory and politics." ("Predatory, Oedipal and Ironic," Meanjin (Winter 1996): 308-317.) Jeanette Hoorn wrote, "Charles Green presents us with the first authoritative reading of the impact of postmodernism on contemporary Australian art . . . . His knowledge of and personal engagement with postcolonial theory is broader than that of any other national commentator." ("Breaking the mould of Australian art," The Age (17 Feb. 1996). Robert Nelson, The Age's senior art critic, wrote, "Peripheral Vision by Charles Green is a crucial text for Australian art. For the foreseeable future, students and scholars of art won't be able to avoid it. All interpretations of recent art will have to take up a position relative to Green's. The text virtually defines the Australian postmodern canon." ("Brave new work opens floodgates for debate," The Age (26 Feb. 1996).

The Third Hand: Artist Collaborations from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (2001).

The Third Hand was the first academic book-length study of artist collaborations in contemporary art. Professor S. Bann wrote for the book's cover: "This is a clearly argued, original and highly illuminating book that provides a genuinely new way of looking at contemporary art." Celebrated artist Marina Abramovic wrote, "As one of the artists Green discusses I thought, 'Yes, this is exactly how it happened,'" adding that the book is "exceptional." Reviews in international journals: Nancy Roth ("Teamworks," Oxford Art Journal, 25/2: 174-175 (2002), wrote, "Green's book breaks new ground . . . It is a mark of a book's successful and suggestive mapping of a new terrain, I think, that a reader finds herself wondering about the implications or a longer historical perspective. . . . The Third Hand is a modestly and thoughtfully framed, carefully researched study that offers not only a new perspective on the transition between modern and postmodern art, but also an intelligent, flexible approach to the study of collaborative work." Art and America's reviewers wrote in a substantial article, "He conveys well the richness and variety of '70s art works linked to conceptualism and reminds us that even recent art history was far more complicated than we may now remember. . . . Green's analysis is rich and allusive . . . . In The Third Hand, Green is convincing about certain oeuvres, and his parsings of plural authorship illuminating." (A. Rochette and W. Saunders, "When Artists Collaborate," Art and America (Oct. 2002): 53-55). "The work of each of these artists is well contextualized by Green, who is clearly an authority in this field." (D'Arcy Curwen, "The Third Hand", Library Journal (USA) 2001); "Green eschews the notions of stylistic mimicry and marginalization that are usually employed in describing Australian art, and makes an original and important contribution to the study of Western art of the second half of the twentieth century" (H. McDonald, "The Third Hand", Art and Australia 39/2 (Dec. 2001), 328); "This is a rare and subtle contribution to Australian art." (A. Ravronavoff (A. Geczy), "The Third Hand," PostWest 20 (2002), 52-54, 54).

Books edited

Articles in refereed journals

Chapters in research-registered books

Chapters in other books since 2000

Journal Articles in professional journals since 2000

Reviews in professional journals since 2000

Curated exhibitions

Papers delivered in conference sessions since 2000

Conferences convened or conference sessions convened since 2000

Creative work as artist: Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

Lyndell Brown, born 1961, Melbourne

Charles Green, born 1953, Melbourne

Since 1989, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green have worked as an artist collaboration.

View artwork of Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

Individual Exhibitions since 2000 (Australian research category J1.8)

Curated group exhibitions since 2000

Creative works included in collections

top of page