Who's in town?
Alan Cruickshank:

Alan Cruickshank is the executive director of the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), Adelaide, and has been editor of Contemporary Visual Art + Culture BROADSHEET magazine since 2000. From 1980 to 2000, he worked as an independent curator, writer, publisher and artist; his work has been exhibited and collected by museums in Australia, Europe, Asia and the USA. Cruickshank was exhibitions manager of the 1998 Biennale of Sydney: Everyday; the assistant curator of the Graham Nash Collection/Curatorial Assistance, Los Angeles (1988); and has had more than twenty years of engagement with the Southeast Asia region, undertaking residencies with TheatreWorks, Singapore (1998); The Substation, Singapore (2006); and Osage Art Gallery, Singapore/Shanghai (2010). He is currently the longest-serving director in the history of the CACSA.

Since being appointed Director of the CACSA, Cruickshank has forged long-term bilateral international relationships within the greater Asia region, especially Southeast Asia. This region is of great importance for Australian contemporary art presenters and publishers, both in terms of connecting Australian cultural production and discourse with that of its “neighbors,” and of facilitating greater mutual awareness and understanding that transcend politics and governments. In this time, the CACSA’s projects have engaged Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Korea and Japan — and, more recently, India, Turkey and the Gulf States of the U.A.E. This vision is contextualized by an Australian national cultural predilection for “The North” (Europe and the USA), and by the country’s two major international visual art events: the Biennale of Sydney, the third oldest biennale in the world, which remains firmly focused on Europe, and the Asia Pacific Triennial, now more concentrated on museum branding than presenting “cutting-edge” works from the region.

The talk will be held in English.