When Dr Lisa Slade began her career, education played a central role. ‘As an educator, I’ve always thought about the historic context of something, but I’ve always been absolutely hell bent on what it means to make it anew in the future,’ she says.
While the recent announcement of Slade’s move from the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) – where she has held the roles of first Curator then Assistant Director, Artistic Programs since 2011 – to the University of Melbourne may have come as a surprise to some, education is in her DNA.
Slade is soon to take up the esteemed position of the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne.
Of her appointment, Slade said in a formal statement: ‘It is my vocation to make art meaningful and purposeful for broad audiences and to position Australian art as a critical cipher in the way we see ourselves. I wish to create a bridge from galleries and museums to universities and the public.’
Speaking with ArtsHub, Slade says, smiling, ‘It’s a bit of a bold step, isn’t it? Probably for Melbourne more than for me, I reckon.’
On her last week at AGSA, ArtsHub enjoyed reflecting with Slade on the Gallery’s evolution during her tenure, the milestone moments and the connecting creative tissue that have led to her new role.
ArtsHub: Looking back, before looking forward – walk me through that journey to today.
Lisa Slade: I’ve never really left teaching – that’s the epiphany that I’m having. I started as a classroom teacher in Western Sydney in 1993, and I’ve never left teaching.
I’ve never had really clear a clear sense of what I’m going to be, so I think being agile in that way has probably served me well.
When I accepted the [AGSA] job in Adelaide, I’d been straddling the university and the art museum in Newcastle, where I was working as a curatorial consultant for the Gallery. I had been pretty well working two full time jobs, and the offer to throw myself into a role in a city that seemed like the perfect size was exciting.
When I got here, I worked closely with Nick [Mitzevich, former AGSA Director], to pull off a whole lot of seemingly impossible things in a radically conservative, and conservatively radical town.
Now, I can’t wait to view Adelaide from afar, because I really think that its radicality and its conservatism are two sides of the one coin. I think some of the things we’ve been able to do have almost been as contingent upon its conservatism as they have been on its radicality – and I love that. It’s a very unique city compared to all the other cities.
AGSA started to find a different kind of visibility in those early years. What were some of the triggers to finding a stride, both personally and institutionally?
LS: I stepped straight into two things, interestingly: one was coordinating, with Cathy Speck, the Art History program with the University of Adelaide. But I also stepped straight into being the Curatorial Coordinator for the Adelaide Biennial. Nick said to me, ‘I really want to bring back the status of the Adelaide Biennial nationally. And I want it to be loved as much inside the institution, as it has been outside the institution.’
The Biennial started in 1990, and by 2011 when I came in, the Gallery had started to fall out of love a little bit with this thing that was so defining. I’m conscious that some of the curators around that period felt a little bit unloved, and I remember hearing something like they weren’t even allowed to change the wall colour before. It just really sticks in my mind as the real mark of how things shifted – not just colour, but building out walls and hanging things in the [Gallery’s more traditional] Elder Wing. The space looked completely different.
I think that was an early indicator of what was possible – and while all those things now seem too obvious to even say, but putting artists first, supporting artists to make their best work, making sure that there is a culture of continual consent and that you’re talking to them along the way – and really, the idea of the institution as accomplice, were [seismic] shifts.
It might have started with Nick, but it has continued, and what I think we’ve achieved is a sense of symmetry – we now look like our communities that we serve.
In that 13-year period, what was the most rigid “brick wall” that you constantly faced, and what still needs more attention?
LS: I think the State’s poverty, really, I mean the State has always been poor since the 1870s after the mining boom. The limitations on the State’s Budget are really the critical thing. That comes back to this conservative versus radical thing, like really big ideas – and I’ve seen a few of them with the rise and fall of Adelaide Contemporary, and then the First Nations Cultural Centre, which while it hasn’t fallen completely off [the radar], we certainly haven’t had any updates about for a long time.
Even closer to home, [we’ve outgrown] the Gallery’s footprint – that’s the main one. But we haven’t let our ambition be curtailed by our footprint, quite literally, to the point where we’re now famous for our salon hangs, and also our touring and partner projects.
Read: Under pressure, Rhana Devenport says the only way is up
When Nick and I arrived, the Gallery was very inward looking, in some ways. It had its community, but I don’t think its partnerships with other organisations were particularly great. Tarnanthi and the Adelaide Biennial have changed that with partnerships, and that’s probably a positive outcome of not having an expanded footprint – we’ve had to rely upon the city and the State to help us deliver our vision, and I feel really proud of that work.
What about the personal milestones – the projects that have been dear to your heart and have really shaped your time at AGSA?
LS: Being involved with Tarnanthi from the get-go has been the single-most institutionally impactful project that has shaped the identity of this place. I’ve had the great fortune to work side-by-side with Nici Cumpston on that.
But personally, in terms of curatorial projects, obviously having a chance to work with Ben [Quilty] again, after a long time of working together. I loved that we opened Quilty here [in 2019] and then took it to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. That was a great symbol, I think, of our collegiality and ambition, that those larger galleries and better resourced galleries recognised it. That show reached just under half a million visitors.
And Sappers & Shrapnel, I think that show was a good example of going, ‘okay, there’s an opportunity’. And while I’m not into war-mongering or celebrating hagiography, how do you come at this thing from a different perspective to prove to people that art is not a luxury, but rather to get across this idea that people make art in their darkest hours – they make it out of an essential requirement of being human.
Trench art was a bit of a breakthrough moment for me to think about that, and who were the trench artists of our time.
That was a big year, because I also curated the Biennial that year [Magic Object, 2016]. We worked with [the Santos Museum of Economic Botany in] the Botanic Gardens, Samstag Museum of Art, the JamFactory, Carrick Hill – it was just crazy when I think about it now, but it was a high point of people in this city going ‘yes, we can do it’.
[As an example of that ambition], I said to our painter and our carpenter, can you work with this artist, Hiromi Tango? I don’t think they had an invitation or a provocation before. It was a really great example of what’s possible when everyone in the organisation could come together.
How has Tarnanthi, and working closely with First Nations artists, changed you, Lisa?
I think it’s really the gentle leadership of Nici Compston, who has this ability to sit beside somebody and listen. I’ve been able to follow her leadership.
I have Aboriginal heritage, which is not a really common part of my story, but working in tandem with Nici that’s really helped me think about my own story. (Slade’s father has Wiradjuri and Caribbean ancestry.)
The more entrenched we get, deeper in our career journeys, while we might look more broadly, our ability to open ourselves sometimes becomes harder, because we’ve got these roles to fulfill. I think that’s a great gift that tenacity actually gives us.
You have this beautiful talent to bring people and art together. How do you value the role of education in the gallery setting?
LS: It’s the main job. I mean, it’s the most important gig, really. I think that moment of acknowledgement, recognition, learning, connection, seeing yourself, not seeing yourself – that’s what the game is about.
The old adage about a work of art not being complete until somebody stands in front of it is really, the act of education.
When I was appointed into this role, it was very much to think about a whole team of people that could work together as public engagement curators, if you like. So, it wasn’t just the Education team or the Public Programs team. There was a sense that everybody could be creative agents … a deep acknowledgement that comes from First Nations thinking.
Essentially, my role has been to position education and public programs in the visitor experience as being as important as the curated experience.
What would be your tips for communicating, then?
LS: Back to that point, get a beat on who’s in your audience. And I don’t mean their CVs, or even their names. Just get a sense of where they’re at. And work to that.
Give yourself a little bit of time at the beginning of a talk to work out who’s there with you, and then you can take them anywhere.
Read: So you want my arts job: Children’s Gallery Curator
What was the attraction for you to move to a university environment with your next role?
LS: At first, to be honest, I couldn’t measure myself up in the shadow of Ian McLean. And then as I started to think a lot about the new role that I think universities can play in being more connected with their communities, and the opportunity to influence the next generation of scholars, but also professionals, I felt like there’s some really great work to be done in reflecting on the new shapes of art history that have been created through exhibition making, my own included, but more broadly, the shifting constellations of culture – whether that’s through biennials, or how our art histories are now made – and the role that exhibitions and collection displays play in making those art histories.
The gallery will lose both yourself and Director Rhana Devenport in the same week. Did that feel unsettling for you in making this decision?
LS: I didn’t know about Rhana’s decision till everybody did, really, when it was communicated to me in March. By then I was heading for interview stage myself. The University [of Melbourne] had approached me in November. So the two have happened coincidentally.
It probably was a bit of a shock for the organisation and possibly for the Board, the [simultaneous] departure of two senior roles, but I think it’s really great for the future of the Gallery because it means that a new directorate can lead together.
I’m excited to think that late 2024, early 2025, is going to mark the beginning of a really new chapter.
Lisa Slade finishes at Art Gallery of South Australia on Wednesday 3 July 2024.
