History Projects: art's ethical engagement with the past

Dr Chen Shuxia is a historian and curator of Chinese art. Her research concerns art collectives, diasporic artistic practice, and reciprocal relations between people and objects. Her most recent books include Chinese Toggles: Culture in Miniature (co-edited with Min-Jung Kim, Power Publications, 2024) and A Home for Photography Learning: the Friday Salon, 1977-1980 (Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House, 2024). Recently, Chen is the State Library of New South Wales David Scott Mitchell Memorial Fellow (2022–23), as well as a grantee of Australian Academy of Humanities’ Travelling Fellowship (postponed to 2024). Chen is the inaugural curator of the Chau Chak Wing Museum's China Gallery, and a lecturer in the Master’s degree programme, Curating and Cultural Leadership, at the University of New South Wales School of Art & Design. She also serves as committee member for the Australia and New Zealand Art Journal (editorial) and The Asian Arts Society of Australia (Management Committee).

Dr Olivier Krischer is a historian and curator of modern and contemporary art in East Asia, as well as Asian Australian diasporas. He is interested in transcultural art, photography and intermedia practices. He was the curator of Assembly (2023) featuring eight Hong Kong-born artists, Wei Leng Tay – Abridge (2021), Wayfaring: Photography in 1970s-80s Taiwan (2021) and Between: Picturing 1950–60s Taiwan (2016). His publications include John Young: The History Projects (2024), Zhang Peili: from Painting to Video (2019) and Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders (2013, with Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins). Krischer is a lecturer at the University of New South Wales School of Art and Design.

Professor Lisa Slade is the Hugh Ramsay Chair in Australian Art History in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. As both a curator and art historian, Lisa has played an active role and has a critical interest in how exhibition making and collection development make Australia’s art histories. Between 2015 and 2024 she was Assistant Director, Artistic Programs at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) where Lisa led the gallery’s creative output including exhibitions, collection displays, public and educational programs. Lisa has curated major exhibitions including Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour, the 2019 Venice Biennale presentation of James Darling and Lesley Forwood’s Living rocks: a fragment of the universe, the 14th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Magic Object, the national touring exhibitions Quilty, and the Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art’s Kungka Kuṉpu (Strong Women) in 2022-2024. Photography by Sia Duff.

Genevieve Trail an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary art from Hong Kong and China. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, working on histories of contemporary art in Hong Kong (1970-1989). More broadly, her scholarship, teaching, and curatorial practice lie at the intersection of modern and contemporary Chinese art, the cultural Cold War in Asia, postcolonial studies, and transnational art historical methods. She was part of the editorial team for John Young: The History Projects (2025), published by Power Publications and edited by Dr Olivier Krischer.

John Young Zerunge AM is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist known for his discursive and scholarly approach to art practice with an aesthetic and ethical commitment. His work draws on transcultural art history to explore the impacts of technology, migratory dislocation, and plural notions of time, resonance, and melancholia. Over the past two decades, Young has focused on two major bodies of work: The History Projects, which evolved from examining violence and benevolence in world historical events to visually re-imagining Chinese Australian history since 1840; and Abstract Paintings, a reassessment of technology’s devastation to bodily skills. Since his first exhibition in 1982 at Rosroe, Connemara, Ireland, Young has held over 80 solo and four survey exhibitions, including one at the Tarrawarra Museum of Art. His work has been shown at major institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and is substantially held in collections including M+ Museum, Hong Kong. Young has also played a key role in regional cultural development, representing Australia in numerous exhibitions across Northeast and Southeast Asia since 1992. He continues to exhibit regularly in Australia, Berlin, and Hong Kong. This most recent book, John Young: History Projects, is published by the Power Institute, University of Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley.