From the first watercolour sketches in 1777, to the sombre photographic scenes from the Oyster Cove mission in 1858, European colonial artists struggled to capture a visual understanding of Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Instead, they left a record of the limits of their own imaginations, and a testament to the ideologies that they sought to impose on a landscape whose stories are still resisted today.

Join us for a lecture on Tasmania’s visual history by Professor Greg Lehman, a well-known Tasmanian art historian, curator, and essayist on Indigenous history, identity, and place. In his lecture, Lehman will explore new and important pathways to truth-telling through a better appreciation of an extraordinary art history.

Registration is essential.

Greg Lehman is a descendent of the Trawulwuy people of northeast Tasmania, and an Adjunct Professorial Fellow at the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Indigenous Knowledges. He holds a Master of Studies in the History of Art and Visual Cultures from Oxford, and a PhD in Art History from the University of Tasmania.

As consultant curator, Greg led the development of First Tasmanians, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery’s first permanent Indigenous gallery. Together with Tim Bonyhady, he also co-curated The National Picture: the Art of Tasmania’s Black War, a major touring show that won the 2019 Museums and Galleries Australia Award for Travelling Exhibitions. Greg is also a published poet and librettist, whose work has been performed at the Hobart Theatre Royal and the Sydney Opera House.

Greg is currently developing Australia’s first history of colonial art from a First Nations perspective, and continues research on Aboriginal fire management and its influence on Tasmania’s landscape.

This lecture is presented as part of Mandy Quadrio: Kukunna Wurraweena.