I have worked on hundreds of Australian/Asian cultural exchange projects over the last 25 years, mostly in the visual arts, but also across performing arts and writing exchanges, and remain frustrated that there is so little understanding both in the “West” and also in specific Asian countries of the backstory behind decisions made on the other side of the negotiating table. I am on a continuous voyage of learning, and the insights and light-bulb moments of recognition remain some of the greatest rewards of this area of work.
Alison Carroll has been an academic, critic, writer, curator and administrator of art exhibitions and artist exchanges with Asia for over 30 years. She has curated over 40 exhibitions, including Out of Asia, the first exhibition to include Australian artists’ attitudes to Asia, in 1989, and the first significant inclusion of contemporary Asian art at an Adelaide Festival, in 1994. In 1990 she established and was Director (until June 2010) of the Arts Program at Asialink, University of Melbourne, the main program for arts exchange between Asia and Australia for visual arts, performing arts, literature and arts management practice. She published a major book on 20th century Asian art The Revolutionary Century; Art in Asia 1900-2000 (Macmillan Australia) in 2010.
She received the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council’s Emeritus Medal 2006 and was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2010 for her work at Asialink.
