Art Forum: Dr. Alex Kershaw

Callistemon / Cook  
Dr. Alex Kershaw 

In this lecture Dr Alex Kershaw will present Callistemon / Cook, a short film originally commissioned by Sydenham International for the Canberra Art Biennial. The film follows two native bonsai through a landscape marked by colonial entanglements, asking how living things carry, contest, and remake history in the present. In addition to discussing the film, the talk will touch on earlier projects that similarly emerge through long-term, collaborative engagements with practitioners whose ritualised relations to plants, objects, and place open onto broader questions of embodiment, intersubjectivity, and more-than-human worlds. While the talk will touch briefly on the thematic resonances these works share, its primary focus will be on different approaches to what might be broadly defined as a site-responsive, performative and socially engaged art practice. 

Dr. Alex Kershaw is an artist and educator. As an artist, he works in photography, video installation and documentary film. As a scholar, he connects photographic history and theory with other fields concerned with intersubjective and multi-species encounters such as ethnography, material culture and performance studies. He holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice from the University of California at San Diego and an MFA from the University of New South Wales, Art and Design. He has written for journals such as FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism and exhibited work at venues such as – Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Australian Centre for Photography, Australia; Jeu de Paume, France; Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany; and Matucana 100, Chile. 

Image: Alex Kershaw, Callistemon / Cook, 2004, video still, 4K video and sound, duration: 8:25 min.