Alex Burchmore – Out of the Melting Pot, into the Garden? Aboriginal-Chinese-Australian Artistic Encounters
2025 Global Encounters Network Seminar Series
Throughout 2025, we will host a monthly webinar series to connect the diverse network of scholars affiliated or linked to the project for a fruitful, ongoing discussion.
Out of the Melting Pot, into the Garden? Aboriginal-Chinese-Australian Artistic Encounters
No comment on cultural contact seems complete without mention of the proverbial “melting pot”, variously implying a mix of diverse ingredients, each adding a unique flavour to the dish, or an alchemical conversion of the leaden and foreign into the golden and familiar. Lived experiences of cultural contact, however, suggest a richer analogy in the equally time-honoured image of the garden as a place of cross-pollination, grafted varietals, and intertwined roots. In this talk, Alex will reflect on the relevance of this model for two instances of Aboriginal-Chinese-Australian artistic encounter: Guan Wei’s creation in 2012-14 of a substantial body of work in blue-and-white porcelain painted with Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs, and the display (until 27 January 2026) at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, of the exhibition Our Story: Aboriginal-Chinese People in Australia, curated by Zhou Xiaoping.
Speaker: Dr Alex Burchmore, Australian National University
Dr Alex Burchmore of the Centre for Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University, is an art historian specialising in the study of Chinese art, past and present, with a larger focus on travel and mobility, trade and exchange, and interactions of the personal and material. His first book New Export China: Translations Across Time and Place in Contemporary Chinese Porcelain Art (University of California Press, 2023), traces the myriad ways in which Chinese artists, inside and outside China, have used porcelain from the 1990s to the present to shape visions of personal and cultural identity. Most recently, he edited and contributed a chapter to Material Selves: Object Biographies and Identities in Motion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), an interdisciplinary volume of essays by scholars in Australia, the UK, and China, interrogating methods of object biography through a transcultural lens.
Host: Distinguished Professor Lynette Russell AM (Monash University)
Time: Thursday 18 September 2025, 6:00pm - 7:00pm AEST
To attend via Zoom, please register here.
For enquiries please contact david.haworth@monash.edu
Monash University values the privacy of every individual's personal information and is committed to the protection of that information from unauthorised use and disclosure except where permitted by law. For information about the handling of your personal information please refer to our Data Protection and Privacy Procedure and the relevant Data Protection and Privacy Collection Statement that applies to your interaction with us, available here.
Event Details
- Date:
- 18 September 2025 at 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
- Categories:
- Monash Indigenous Studies Centre (MISC); Global Encounters & First Nations People
Description
2025 Global Encounters Network Seminar Series
Throughout 2025, we will host a monthly webinar series to connect the diverse network of scholars affiliated or linked to the project for a fruitful, ongoing discussion.
Out of the Melting Pot, into the Garden? Aboriginal-Chinese-Australian Artistic Encounters
No comment on cultural contact seems complete without mention of the proverbial “melting pot”, variously implying a mix of diverse ingredients, each adding a unique flavour to the dish, or an alchemical conversion of the leaden and foreign into the golden and familiar. Lived experiences of cultural contact, however, suggest a richer analogy in the equally time-honoured image of the garden as a place of cross-pollination, grafted varietals, and intertwined roots. In this talk, Alex will reflect on the relevance of this model for two instances of Aboriginal-Chinese-Australian artistic encounter: Guan Wei’s creation in 2012-14 of a substantial body of work in blue-and-white porcelain painted with Aboriginal Australian-inspired motifs, and the display (until 27 January 2026) at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra, of the exhibition Our Story: Aboriginal-Chinese People in Australia, curated by Zhou Xiaoping.
Speaker: Dr Alex Burchmore, Australian National University
Dr Alex Burchmore of the Centre for Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University, is an art historian specialising in the study of Chinese art, past and present, with a larger focus on travel and mobility, trade and exchange, and interactions of the personal and material. His first book New Export China: Translations Across Time and Place in Contemporary Chinese Porcelain Art (University of California Press, 2023), traces the myriad ways in which Chinese artists, inside and outside China, have used porcelain from the 1990s to the present to shape visions of personal and cultural identity. Most recently, he edited and contributed a chapter to Material Selves: Object Biographies and Identities in Motion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), an interdisciplinary volume of essays by scholars in Australia, the UK, and China, interrogating methods of object biography through a transcultural lens.
Host: Distinguished Professor Lynette Russell AM (Monash University)
Time: Thursday 18 September 2025, 6:00pm - 7:00pm AEST
To attend via Zoom, please register here.
For enquiries please contact david.haworth@monash.edu
Monash University values the privacy of every individual's personal information and is committed to the protection of that information from unauthorised use and disclosure except where permitted by law. For information about the handling of your personal information please refer to our Data Protection and Privacy Procedure and the relevant Data Protection and Privacy Collection Statement that applies to your interaction with us, available here.