The External Landscape: the history of art therapy and asylum in Australia
Thursday 21 August at 6pm Venue: Cunningham Dax Collection 35 Poplar Road Parkville, Melbourne 3052 Melways 29 D 11 Refreshments provided
Historians Dr. Belinda Robson and Dr. Ann Westmore will discuss the origins of formal art-making within psychiatric hospitals, both in England and Australia, and the history of Victorian mental health system.
Dr Belinda Robson Dr Belinda Robson is a Research Fellow at the McCaughey Centre: VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Wellbeing. She completed her PhD on the life and work of Dr Eric Cunningham Dax in 2000 and in 2006 wrote “Recovering Art: A History of the Cunningham Dax Collection.” She has also had published numerous articles about the history of psychiatry, Dr Eric Cunningham Dax and the Cunningham Dax Collection. Dr Robson has also worked in the non-government sector,including a period as a policy officer at VICSERV, the peak body for psychiatric disability support services in Victoria, and has also worked as a Senior Policy officer within the Department of Justice. She is currently undertaking research at the McCaughey Centre, regarding families and mortgage stress in the outer northern communities of Melbourne.
Dr Anne Westmore Dr Ann Westmore is the author of “A Century of Psychiatry & Mental Health Services: Victoria, 1900-2000””. She completed her PhD in the University of Melbourne History and Philosophy of Science Department in 2002. Her thesis, titled ‘Mind, Mania and Science; Psychiatry and the Culture of Experiment in Mid-Twentieth Century Victoria’, acted as the springboard for the co-authoring of a book on the history of psychiatry in Victoria in the 20th century, which will be published in 2009. In her other life, Ann is a medical writer and the author of numerous books, focusing on the areas of women’s health and sexual health. Increasingly she has fused writing history with writing about health and medicine through her involvement in a number of web-based history of Australian medicine projects.
The Art of Making Sense Until 1 November 2008
The Cunningham Dax Collection 35 Poplar Road, Parkville, Melbourne VIC 3052 Gallery hours: Wed, Thurs, Fri 10am – 4pm, Sat 1 – 5pm Admission FREE
The Art of Making Sense takes a uniquely critical approach to the display of creative works by people who experience mental illness and/or psychological trauma. It includes over seventy creative works from the Collection including paintings, drawings, collages, textiles and sculptures, dating from the 1950s to recent acquisitions. In addition, historic photographs,archival documents and other writings provide a glimpse into daily life in a Victorian asylum.
For more information email info@daxcollection.org.au