Art Forum | Ian Bow
Workspace 3496, 2/38 Indi Avenue, Red Cliffs, VIC, Australia, Victoria
Wednesday, 29 November
Art Forum | Ian Bow: an Australian artist reforming postwar adult education through art
Heather Lee
Wednesday 29 November
5.00pm for 5.10pm start
Abstract: Interdisciplinary readings of the phenomenon of modernism in Australia perceive of its multifarious nature. Within this frame, the influence of émigré artists, like Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, in shaping a modern pedagogical system of art education is a topic of current scholarship. Certainly, in projects such as Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education Through Art, Design and Architecture, Goad, McNamara and Stephen assert that ‘émigré’s had profound and diverse effects on postwar education’ (2019: 1). But what of the influence of Australian-born artist-educators? To address that question, this paper will bring to light the activities of Melbourne-born and based artist-educator Ian Bow (1914-1989) who was on the frontline of mid-century educational reform. Like his associate Hirschfeld-Mack, Bow participated in the 1954 Melbourne UNESCO seminar on art in education, and he established and directed the arts curriculum at one of Melbourne’s independent schools. However, it is Bow’s work in adult education 1944-1969 that he exerted greatest influence and where I contend that Bow’s Practical Painting classes were fundamental in modernist strategies to foster education through art and to embed art in the social fabric of Victoria, including Mildura.
Bio: Heather Lee is a PhD Candidate in Art History with the University of Adelaide. Her thesis researches the Melbourne-based modernist painter/sculptor/educator Ian Graham Bow (1914-1989). Bow’s contribution to the discipline is articulated through his archive and his many artworks held in collections nation-wide however, in the early 1970s Bow’s career as an artist and educator ended and his voice has remained muted since. Couched as a contextual biography with accompanying catalogue raisonné, Lee’s thesis argues that Bow was among those art professionals at the forefront of contributing to socio-cultural change in Victoria and shaping a socially modern state.