Gordon H. Brown Lecture 11: Ross Gibson, 'Aqueous Aesthetics: An Art History of Change' | 2013

Published 2013 by Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
48 pages
210 x 170mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
Edited by Geoffrey Batchen
ISSN 1176-5887

Aqueous Aesthetics, by Australian scholar Ross Gibson, calls for an art history that “records, analyses and theorizes how creativity proceeds in a world that is suffused with fluidity”. The structure and language of Gibson’s text embodies this fluidity, as do the various objects—art works, music, literature, chance encounters, anecdotes—he incorporates as his examples. Adopting a voice at once personal and learned, Gibson proposes a mode of history writing different in kind from that usually encountered in books about art, a writing that is multidisciplinary in its range of interests and transnational in its scope.

Ross Gibson (PhD, FAHA) is Professor of Contemporary Arts at the University of Sydney. In his research, Gibson makes books, films and art installations and he encourages postgraduate students in similar pursuits. His scholarly work spans several media and disciplines addressing environmental consciousness and cross-cultural negotiations in colonial history, particularly in Australia and the Pacific.