i of iii: ART
Nelson Meers Auditorium,
Chau Chak Wing Museum

Approaches to Practice as New Knowledge Production

A one-day symposium exploring Practice as Research as a vital mode of knowledge production.

Bringing together HDR candidates, artists, academics and researchers from across Sydney’s arts institutions, the symposium will consider how artistic practice operates as a method of research. It asks what kinds of knowledge can only emerge through practice, and how artistic methods challenge, expand or reframe conventional research paradigms.

Keynote

Professor Barbara Bolt

Barbara Bolt is a Professorial Fellow at The Victorian

College of the Arts at The University of Melbourne. She is

a practising artist and art theorist. Her research addresses

the dialogue between theory and practice and between

digital and analogue painting seen through the lens of New

Materialisms. Her publications include two monographs

Art Beyond Representation (2004) and Heidegger

Reframed (2011) and five co-edited books including

Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts(2007),

Carnal Knowledge: Towards a “New Materialism” through

the Arts (2013) and Material Inventions: Applying Creative

Arts Research (2014) with Estelle Barrett. Barbara has

been a finalist in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize, the

Portia Geach Memorial Award, The Adelaide Perry Prize

for Drawing, the Swan Hill Print and Drawing Prize

and the Alice Prize. Her works are held in collections

including Artbank, the University of Western Australia,

Curtin University, Edith Cowan University and Murdoch

University

Moderated by
Nick Croggan

Events and Programs Officer of The Power Institute

This Symposium was sponsored by the University of Sydney’s Gradtuate Research Activities and Development Scheme (GRADS).

Convened by Isobel Markus-Dunworth and Bronte Cormican-Jones.

Delivered in collaboration with the Power Institute, Chau Chak Wing Museum and Sydney College of the Arts

Speakers

Dr. Diana Baker Smith

Diana Baker Smith is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine

Arts at UNSW Sydney. Her projects have been presented

nationally at institutions including the Art Gallery of

NSW, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, National

Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of

Modern Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, La Trobe Art

Institute, and the Biennale of Sydney. Internationally her

work has been presented at Te Uru, Auckland, The Physics

Room, Christchurch, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea,

Milan, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, and

Hayward Gallery, London.

In 2024 she received the Judy Wheeler Commission from

Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and in 2025 was

awarded the Major Acquisitive Gosford Art Prize. She is

currently artist-in-residence at Vaucluse House, Museums

of History NSW.

Associate Professor Andrew Lavery

Co-Chair of Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) and Dean’s

Fellow for Academic Excellence. His previous roles include

Deputy Dean and Associate Dean of Learning and teaching

at SCA.

As inaugural Director and Chair of SCA (2017–2021),

Andrew led SCA’s transformation from a faculty at Rozelle

into a thriving department on the Camperdown Campus,

shaping its vision, public profile and culture while driving

performance across teaching, research, and engagement.

Andrew’s artistic practice spans three decades, with works

exhibited nationally and internationally and held in public

and private collections. Through a historical materialist

framework, his works interpret urban decay — past,

present, and future — as a critique of progress in late

capitalist society.

Andrew is a co-opted board member of the Australian

Council of Deans and Directors of Creative Arts.

Dr. Jaime Tsai

Jaime Tsai is Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the

National Art School, Sydney and an independent curator of

contemporary Australian art.

Her current research explores how the strategies of Dada

and Surrealism have been adapted and expanded by

contemporary Australian artists. She has contributed to the

Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Visual Culture(forthcoming

2027), the International Encyclopedia of Surrealism

(2019) and her publications include “Surrealism, Counter-

Mapping and COVID: Confluences in Contemporary

Asian Australian Art” (with Victoria Carruthers) in the

International Journal of Surrealism 1, no. 2 (Spring 2024),

“The Subterranean Modernism of Bataille and Duchamp,”

in Duchamp Accelerated (2024), “Pixel Pirates: Theft as

Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda Jerk,” in Dada

Data: Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth

Politics (2023) and “Equivocal Taxonomies: Fiona Hall and

the Logic of Display” in the Australian and New Zealand

Journal of Art (2016).

Dr. Sara Oscar

Sara Oscar is a photographic artist, writer and academic.

Her creative research considers the impact of visual

technologies in shaping conceptions of self and other,

often playing upon photographic ways of seeing that

shape what is classified, remembered and forgotten in

image collections. Her scholarly research considers the

epistemic, cultural and ontological impacts of AI-generated

technology as part of a broader historical framework of

photography. She has written for Photographies, Digital

Creativity, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Philosophy of

Photography and The Conversation. She recently co-edited

the 2026 special issue of Photographies, Photography and

Memory in the Age of AI.

Her creative work has been exhibited extensively in

Australia. Recent exhibitions include The Mute and

Counterfactual Departures at Annandale Galleries (2026);

A Gestural Drift at Artbank (2025); Execute_Photography

at RMIT Galleries, curated by Daniel Palmer, Katrina

Sluis, Alison Bennett and Shane Hulbert (2024); PHOTO

2021: International Festival of Photography, Melbourne

(2021); and the National Photography Prize, MAMA

Albury (2022). Her work is held in national collections,

including the AGNSW and Artbank. She holds a PhD from

the University of Sydney and is a Senior Lecturer in Visual

Communication at the University of Technology Sydney.

Practice as Research

Symposium I of III: Art

Symposium II of III: Cross-Disciplinary

Symposium II of III: Evaluating PaR

Archive (Reading Group)

Future

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