Image by Helen Grace and Narelle Jubelin
Join us for a special screening of ‘The Housing Question’, followed by a short discussion featuring Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, of the University of Sydney’s Art Collection, and Helen Grace, filmmaker.
The Housing Question is a collaborative video work by Helen Grace and Narelle Jubelin that takes its title from Friedrich Engels’ seminal 1872 texts addressing the severe housing shortages in his native Germany. After nearly 150 years this question remains central to contemporary social and political debates.
Grace and Jubelin explore these issues through two exemplary modernist homes: Harry and Penelope Seidler’s house in Sydney’s Killara (1967), and Casa Huarte (1966) in Madrid by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún. The two houses are almost exactly contemporary statements in modernist architecture, made thousands of kilometres apart in markedly different nations and political circumstances. Yet despite their dissimilar contexts, the Australian and Spanish architects shared globally influential aspirations to create more equitable societies through the provision of excellent and widely available housing. Both architects created important social housing projects, which the artists explore, using rare original materials.
The focus on the two houses, in Australia and in Spain, leads to considering modernist town planning and mass housing more generally, the role of social housing, and, importantly, the urgent issues surrounding access to shelter, given today’s movements of refugees and asylum-seekers. Rich in historical imagery and intimate footage of both houses, The Housing Question connects broad social issues with the personal and emotional impact of modern and contemporary ideas about house and home.
Speakers
Helen Grace, Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Dr Ann Stephen, Senior Curator, University Art Collection, University of Sydney
chaired by
Professor Nicole Gurran, Director, Henry Halloran Research Trust
Helen Grace (b Gunditjmara Country) is an artist, writer and teacher, based in Sydney (Wangal Country) and (formerly) Hong Kong. She was the Founding Director of the MA Programme in Visual Culture Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong and is now Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney; in 2012-13 she was Visiting Professor in the Department of English, National Central University, Taiwan on a National Science Council Fellowship. Helen is an award winning filmmaker and new media producer. Her photo media work is in the collections of Artbank, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of NSW and Art Gallery of South Australia as well as private collections nationally and internationally.
Her recent projects include Justice for Violet and Bruce, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, 2022, The Housing Question (with Narelle Jubelin), Penrith Regional Galleries, Home of the Lewers Bequest, 2019, Thought Log, SCA Galleries, Sydney (2016) and Map of Spirits, Gallery 4A, Sydney (2015). Her recent books include Culture, Aesthetics and Affect in Ubiquitous Media: The Prosaic Image (Routledge, 2014) and Technovisuality: Cultural Re-enchantment and the Experience of Technology. (Co editors, Amy Chan, Kit Sze and Wong Kin Yuen) IB Tauris, 2016)
Dr Ann Stephen's curatorial career over four decades has been in public and university museums. She joined Sydney University Museums as the senior curator of the University Art Gallery in 2009, and has been responsible for the University Art Collection and developing the art exhibition and publication program.
As President, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (2011–14), Ann has been a mentor for early career academics as well as many colleagues in art history and art curatorship. She has an established national and international publishing record in modernism and conceptual art and in 2015 was invited to join the Scientific Committee of the European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies.
She has been awarded two ARC grants and many prizes for her academic work. She was appointed a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2009. Since 2014, she has been chair of Art Monthly Australasia.
Professor Nicole Gurran is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Sydney, where she directs the Henry Halloran Research Trust. Over two decades her research and publications have focused on housing affordability, urban planning, and climate change. She is committed to informing public policy and debate through her research, media commentary, and advice to governments, and most recently served as Co-Commissioner on the People’s Commission into the Housing Crisis.