Presented in partnership with Curtin University’s School of Design and Art (SoDA).

Coinciding with Richard Bell’s Embassy and William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time, this symposium explores the unique roles that artists can play as activists, in both analysing and re-routing the ongoing exercise of colonial power in the contemporary world. Speakers will discuss their practice or those artists who consider and challenge the interplay between history, memory, place and the body; the revival and maintenance of colonial power structures; and the relationship between aesthetics and activism. As well as exploring the political possibilities opened up by these cultural interventions, the symposium considers whether there are paradigms beyond the ‘postcolonial’ to describe the complex operations of power and its resistance in societies with colonial histories.

The symposium will also launch the catalogue for Richard Bell’s exhibition Embassy.