Date: Wednesday 19 April 2017
Time: 6‒8.30pm
Venue: Clemenger Auditorium BBDO, NGV International, Melbourne
Love, a complex emotion to say the least, has inspired artists and creative practitioners for centuries, generating countless artworks, objects, poems, books, musical compositions and films. Over three weeks this masterclass will explore the materiality, visions and sounds of love in response to the exhibition 'Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1800' held at the National Gallery of Victoria (31 March to 18 June 2017); a collaborative project produced with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at The University of Melbourne.
Each week will explore a theme within the exhibition. Led by Love: Art of Emotion curator and lead researcher, Dr Angela Hesson, the masterclass series will be a blend of lectures, discussions and performances by some of the University’s most celebrated scholars and musicians. There will also be exclusive exhibition viewing for the first two sessions.
Stories of Love: Film and Literature
Introduction by Dr Angela Hesson
Speaker: Professor Stephanie Trigg
Stephanie Trigg will explore one of the most famous stories of medieval love: the impossible triangle of the exemplary loves between Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot.
Professor Stephanie Trigg is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Melbourne, and Chief Investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her most recent book is Shame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter.
Speaker: Dr Mark Nicholls
Art cinema tells its love stories with an emphasis on the notion of variety. Far from being narrow, conservative and casually affirmative, cinematic tales of love have always explored the perverse outer-regions of desire in order to help us understand the role of love within the fabric of society.
Dr Mark Nicholls is Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne. His publications include Lost Objects of Desire: The Performances of Jeremy Irons and Scorsese’s Men: Melancholia and the Mob. Mark has worked as a film journalist for ABC Radio and The Age and has a list of stage credits as a playwright, performer, producer and director.
Speaker: Dr Lucy Van
Lucy Van will discuss love in the classical tradition, focusing on authorial divergence and desire in Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria.
Dr Lucy Van is a writer and academic living in Melbourne, whose research fields are poetry and photography. She is a regular contributor to discussions on contemporary Australian poetry, and is an editor for Cordite Poetry Review. Lucy has taught history and theory of Western and postcolonial poetry in the English and Theatre Studies departments at the University of Melbourne. She is currently researching the history of Australian women photographers in the era of late colonial modernity.