Prior to being appointed as CEO and Director at the National Art School, Sydney, Dr Kristen Sharp was an Associate Professor and Associate Dean Discipline, Art in the School of Art, RMIT University. Kristen’s research focuses on contemporary Asian art, urban space, public art and sound art. She has led several international research projects including Phantasms for Future Ecologies (with M. Dwyer/T. Hulbert) and Mutable Ecologies (with P. Samartzis) and is the co-author of Screen Ecologies (MIT Press 2016). Kristen is an invited speaker, writer and peer-reviewer. She has also convened several innovative and interdisciplinary research symposia, reframing the relationship between contemporary art practice and global urban space, and drawing together Australian and international researchers. Kristen continues to develop art projects in the Asia-Pacific region responding to the environmental, material and social spaces of the city.
Dr Kristen Sharp
Director & CEO
Simon Cooper
Head of Studies, Deputy Director
Victoria White
Chief Operating Officer
Dr Yolunda Hickman
Head of Postgraduate Studies, Acting Head of Learning & Teaching
Lorraine Kypiotis
Head of Undergraduate Studies
Dr Michael Hill
Head of Art History & Theory
Dr Louise Boscacci
Head of Ceramics
Dr Maryanne Coutts
Head of Drawing
Dr Stephen Little
Head of Painting
Dr Alex Kershaw
Acting Head of Photomedia
Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig
Head of Printmaking
Hany Armanious
Head of Sculpture
John Waight
Head of First Peoples Programs
Dr Jaime Tsai
Art History & Theory Lecturer
Dr Shane Haseman
Art History & Theory Lecturer
Dr Molly Duggins
AHT Lecturer / Academic English Coord.
Dr Kristen Sharp
Director & CEO
Simon Cooper
Head of Studies, Deputy Director
BA Fine Arts (VIC College, Prahran), GradDip Fine Arts (VCA)
Simon Cooper has practiced and exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally. His work is held in numerous private and public collections throughout the world including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, South Korea.
He completed his undergraduate studies in Printmaking at Prahran College, Victoria and his post-graduate studies at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Simon has taught with a range of institutions in Australia including Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne; RMIT University, Melbourne; University of Southern Queensland; and Chisholm Institute, Melbourne. Since joining NAS in 2001 as Head of Printmaking, he has held other academic positions within the school including Acting Director, and is currently Head of Studies.
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Victoria White
Chief Operating Officer
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Dr Yolunda Hickman
Head of Postgraduate Studies, Acting Head of Learning & Teaching
Yolunda Hickman works in the wider fields of painting and drawing, aiming to test the potential of images and communication systems. She has exhibited extensively in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally including the exhibitions Domestic Sects at Neon Park (Melbourne); Size at Te Tuhi (Auckland); Crossings at Adam Art Gallery (Wellington); Shoaling at Blue Oyster (Dunedin); and Zombies Everywhere at Sumer Fine Arts (Tauranga). In 2019, Yolunda was awarded the 4Plinths Sculpture Commission by the Wellington Sculpture Trust, with Signal Forest opening the following year on the Te Papa Tonagrewa forecourt. In 2016, she travelled to Canada for a residency at Banff Centre for the Arts and was also part of the RM Summer Residency, Auckland.
Yolunda teaches across the postgraduate programmes at National Art School and completed her doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2020.
Lorraine Kypiotis
Head of Undergraduate Studies
MA (Uni Syd.) BA. Dip Ed (Uni Syd.)
Lorraine Kypiotis holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Sydney in Renaissance Studies and is currently engaged in a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History at the University of Sydney with a strong focus on the function of artefacts within art academies and institutions. Her research interests also include Women in Art, Museology and 19th century Australian Art History. Lorraine is also a frequent and popular guest lecturer at the AGNSW and is a regular guest on ABC Radio National’s Nightlife program.
As the former Education Outreach Coordinator at the National Art School, Lorraine is passionate about art, education and history. She is an experienced educator who has taught in both the secondary and tertiary sectors and has been lecturing in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School since 1997. High on her list of priorities is regional and national engagement with the high school sector. She runs a number of programs, both inbound and outbound, which, as well as promoting the scope of ongoing tertiary study in art at the National Art School, foster the building of skills, knowledge and values in the fine arts.
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Dr Michael Hill
Head of Art History & Theory
MA, PhD (Sydney)
Michael is Head of Art History at the National Art School, where he has lectured for over twenty years. His research has roamed over diverse areas, including classical architectural theory, the Italian Baroque, modernist art criticism, and Australian sculpture. Michael is also the national artistic advisor to Sculpture by the Sea.
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Dr Louise Boscacci
Head of Ceramics
BSc (Hons.) (JCU), BFA (NAS), PhD (UOW)
An acclaimed Australian ceramics artist over the past two decades, Louise is an innovative artist educator, interdisciplinary scholar of affect, materiality, and more-than-human relations, and a collaborative author on recent art and the anthropocene. In creative practice and critical pedagogy she asks bigger questions of how art and diverse artists might attune, respond, regenerate and thrive in Oceania and the Asia-Pacific in the twenty-first century.
Louise is an alumna of the National Art School in ceramics and builds on her tenure as a Ceramics Lecturer (2020–2023), and a Sessional Lecturer, Ceramics (2016–2020). She has lectured at the University of Wollongong (2016–2018), co-developing new subject content on contemporary art and climate change as part of the Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) degree. As an interdisciplinary practitioner and thinker, Boscacci has held the positions of Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Associate Fellow (2017–2022; adjunct) and was a founding member of the Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO)/Centre for Critical Creative Practice at UOW.
Louise has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, with 14 major solo and 52 group and collaborative two-person exhibitions since 1997, including significant curatorial representations in capstone events, from Clay Energy (Clay Gulgong 2010 invited Master Artist) to Clay Dynasty (2021–3, Powerhouse Museum Sydney). She was awarded the prestigious Australia Council London Studio Residency for her practice in contemporary ceramics, and is a recipient of two New Work grants by the Australia Council for large-scale porcelain works conceived as future archives of extinction witness, and new ceramics and sound investigations. Her distinctive ceramics are held in the National Gallery of Australia, state and regional Australian gallery collections, and numerous private art collections in Australia, the UK, USA, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Boscacci’s recent publications include the multi-author book, 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (2019) and chapters in cutting-edge projects, Postcards from the Anthropocene: Unsettling the Geopolitics of Representation (2022) and Water Lore: Place, Practice, and Poetics (2022).
Courses and Subjects Taught:
- STU100 First-Year Ceramics Foundations A
- STU120 Wheelwork Multiplicity; First Year Co-ordinator
- CER200 Ceramics 2 Plate Tectonics, Independent Research Project
- STS 200 Studio Seminar 2
- CER300 Ceramics 3 Studio Specialisation
- STS 300 Studio Seminar 3
- MFA1 CER400 Studio Specialisation; Subject Co-ordinator
- MFA2 Research Supervision
- DFA Research Supervision
- NAS Summer School 2017–2022: Clay, Wheel, Body
Areas of Specialisation – potential MFA and DFA research supervision areas:
- Regenerative Ceramics
- Embodiment, the Senses, Affect and Ceramics
- Clay as Country: Decolonising Clay
- More-than-human Ceramics
- Sound and Ceramics
- Ceramics and Photography
- Ceramics and Drawing
- Objects and Affect in the Anthropocene
- New Materialisms and Situated Knowledges
- Art/Ceramics and Climate
- Art/Ceramics and Ecology
- Art and Environmental Change (Material-discursive Investigations)
- Feminist Studies in Art and Global Environmental Change
- Clay/Ceramics and Time
- Ceramics and Wit(h)nessing
- Objects and Words/Storying/Worlds
- Relational Ceramics Practice
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Dr Maryanne Coutts
Head of Drawing
BFA (VCA), Grad Dip (UNSW) PhD (Ballarat)
Maryanne Coutts completed a PHD at the University of Ballarat in 1999 and has taught at Monash University, the Australian Catholic University, University of Ballarat, Latrobe University and the National Art School, where she is currently Head of Drawing. She works with animation, watercolour and drawing to explore the human experience of the passage of time. Coutts’ work has been included in group exhibitions throughout Australia and overseas. She was awarded the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2007. Her work is held by several regional and tertiary collections.
Areas of Specialisation:
Maryanne’s particular areas of interest and specialization include Drawing and Time, Animation, Narrative and Literature Theory, Poetics of Mass Media, Textiles, Contemporary Drawing Practices and Journaling.
Courses and Subjects Taught:
DRA100 Drawing 1
DRA200 Drawing 2
DRA300 Drawing 3
DRA400 Drawing 4
MFA Supervision
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Dr Stephen Little
Head of Painting
BA Visual Arts (Nepean CAE), Grad Dip Visual Arts, MVA (Sydney), PhD (Lond.)
Dr Stephen Little is an artist and educator and he has taught progressive, creative higher education courses since the early 1990s. Prior to his current role as Head of Painting with Australia’s National Art School he has held lecturing posts at a range of other creative arts institutions. These have included Goldsmiths College in London, Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney), the University of Western Sydney (Nepean), the Australian Catholic University and Penrith College of TAFE.
Aside from academic posts Stephen has spent many years working in different capacities with a range of galleries in Australia and overseas. These have included, but are not limited to, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the Alan Cristea Gallery (London), White Cube (London), and the Lisson Gallery (London) where he held the position of Technical Manager for five years.
The wealth of accrued experience that he now brings to his current post, in conjunction with his arts practice and his professional associations across a range of educational institutions, has provided him with a valuable and varied set of competencies that draw on theory, practice based research, and first hand experience with some of the art industry’s most reputable galleries and international art organisations.
Areas of Specialisation:
Stephen’s studio work draws on a range of different media as a means to extend current discourses on the limits of the ‘paintable’. In his PhD thesis Painting in Transit: Inter-domain transfer and material reformation, he investigated alternative perceptual models, materials, and modes of presentation to those traditionally used in the classification of painting. Stephen locates ‘painting’ today as being no longer wholly definable in relation to its former material tradition, but as existing within a range of material exchanges and perceptual associations that ultimately generate their own variations, relationships and internal logics.
Subjects and Courses Taught:
PAI100 Painting Introduction 1
PAI120 Painting Studio Elective 1
PAI200 Painting Studio Major 2
STS200 Painting Studio Seminar 2
PAI300 Painting Studio Major 3
PRS300 Professional Studies / Painting Studio Seminar 3
MFA Supervision
- enquiries@nas.edu.au
- +612 9339 8744
Dr Alex Kershaw
Acting Head of Photomedia
Dr Alex Kershaw is an artist, writer 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.
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Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig
Head of Printmaking
BFA Griffith University, BFA (Hons) Griffith University, PhD (QCA) Griffith University
Carolyn Craig is an artist whose work examines the coded construction of subjectivity. She investigates inscriptive performance as an active site for the maintenance and enforcement of types of cultural normativity with a particular focus on the idea of “habitus” as discussed by Pierre Bourdieu. Carolyn deconstructs gestural actions as tropes and stereotypes by utilising her own body as a site of absurd action. The performative traces of these gestures are recorded and inverted to query the distribution and maintenance of fixity. She is one half of the artist collective BRUCE & Barry with Heidi Stevens.
Areas of Specialisation:
Carolyn’s interests and areas of specialization include gender and typological representations, photo discourse and history, drawing ontologies, contemporary print-media and social praxis and contemporary art.
Subjects and Courses Taught:
STU100 Studio Introduction to Printmaking
PRI200 Printmaking 2
PRI300 Printmaking 3
PRI400 Printmaking Honours
Expanded Printmedia
MFA Supervision
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Hany Armanious
Head of Sculpture
BVA (CAI), PhD (UOW)
Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s foremost artists, will take up the position of Head of Sculpture at the National Art School from the beginning of the 2019 academic year. A warm, experienced and inspirational educator, Hany Armanious has been teaching in the higher education context since 1998, as a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, the College of Fine Art, UNSW and most recently as a full time permanent lecturer at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. At QCA he has been responsible for the design and implementation of a new sculpture curriculum, expanding the understanding
of the role of sculpture in contemporary art, with an emphasis on merging skills and material possibilities with conceptual rigour.
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John Waight
Head of First Peoples Programs
MA (UNSW)
John was appointed to the new position Head of First Peoples Programs in February 2022. John is from the Mangarayi people whose country is just outside Katherine. John has worked as Curator and Liaison Officer at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, and Darwin was Manager of the Maningrida Arts and Culture Shop, and Curator of Aboriginal Art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, where he delivered the 29th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. John was also an Aboriginal Health Education Officer at Albion Health Centre and recently completed his Masters of Curation and Cultural Leadership at UNSW. John also sits on a number of cultural boards and committees, including Artback NT, Create NSW MultiArts, MAAS Indigenous Reference Committee, and the Sydney Culture Network. As Head of First Peoples Programs, John will lead the development and coordination of First Peoples academic, community and public programs, policies, and curricula. In addition, the role provides essential leadership for First Peoples engagement and public advocacy at NAS, including the development of courses, student welfare and professional practice.
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Dr Jaime Tsai
Art History & Theory Lecturer
Jaime is an art historian and independent curator based in Sydney, and a lecturer in modern and contemporary art in the department of Art History and Theory and the National Art School. Her doctoral thesis completed at the University of Sydney (2012) was entitled ‘Impossible Topographies: the Spatial Art of Marcel Duchamp.’ She has a special interest in surrealist legacies and the nexus between the art/architectural object and 20th century philosophies of space. Her current research project is on the subterranean aesthetics of Marcel Duchamp and Georges Bataille.
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Dr Shane Haseman
Art History & Theory Lecturer
Shane Haseman is an artist, writer, academic and occasional curator. He has exhibited extensively over a fifteen-year period both nationally and internationally. Selected exhibitions include: 2015 Performa Biennial, New York; 2006 Adelaide Biennial, Art Gallery of South Australia; ‘New 11’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, Artspace, Sydney; ‘Post-Contemporary Painting’, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Shane received his PhD from the University of Sydney, Department of Art History and Theory, with a thesis on the theory and practice of the Situationist International. He has written articles for Australian art journals and institutions, including the MCA and Artspace. Shane is co-director of KNULP Gallery and lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School.
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Dr Molly Duggins
AHT Lecturer / Academic English Coord.
Dr. Molly Duggins’ interests lie in the visual and material culture of the British Empire. Current publishing projects include edited volumes on nineteenth-century marine material culture and the Australian object in art history, as well as a monograph on albums and the colonial world. Research for these projects has been supported through fellowships at the State Library of New South Wales, the Yale Center for British Art (CT, USA), the Strong Museum of Play (NY, USA), and the Winterthur Museum and Library (DE, USA).
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