User:Nigel Lendon

Nigel Lendon has worked as an artist, art historian and curator in the fields of minimalist and conceptual art, with a particular interest in the relation between tradition and innovation and a focus on collaborative and interdisciplinary practices. For the last fifteen years, he has focused on the history and theory of Indigenous Australian art. With Wally Caruana he curated the landmark National Gallery of Australia exhibition The Painters of the Wagilag Sisters Story : 1937-1997. His place as a key figure in the literature concerning the nature of innovation in Indigenous arts has been established by this and other exhibitions including Abstractions and Synergies (both exhibitions mounted 2003, with Howard Morphy and others). His current research derives from the exhibition and publication The Rugs of War at the ANU School of Art Gallery, subsequently at the Nexus Gallery for the 2004 Adelaide Festival of Arts. Recent publications including the essay “Innovation and its Meanings” in No Ordinary Place: The Art Of David Malangi (Susan Jenkins, Editor, Canberra, National Gallery of Australia, 2005). Associate Professor Lendon is the Associate Head of the School of Art at the Australian National University. Together with Professor Tim Bonyhady (Director of the Centre for Environmental Law, College of Law) he currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery grant to research the war carpets of Afghanistan. He is a Fellow of the National Gallery of Australia Foundation and a Founding Benefactor of the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation.