Research

UNSW Judith Neilson Chair Professor Paul Gladston and his team are dedicated to the development of innovative critical research in the field of contemporary art and cultural studies.

artwork by tan lijie

A top-ranked research-intensive university, UNSW holds the 19th position globally in QS World University Rankings.

Research by the Chair

Paul Gladston's award winning research and critical writing continues to have a significant impact on the international development of critical Chinese contemporary art/cultural studies. Gladston’s publications are included on university undergraduate and graduate course reading lists in Europe, North America and China, and several have been translated into languages other than English.

    • ‘The Thames Arcadia Rhizome’ (Funded by the Judith Neilson Endowment)

    This project critically explores a rhizomic network of intertextual relationships linking English Romanticism during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in and around the area known as the ‘Thames Arcadia’ to sites of aestheticized display and experience in other historical and cultural contexts world-wide.  

    • ‘Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art’ (Funded by the Judith Neilson Endowment)

    This project critically addresses questions related to the displaying of Chinese contemporary art in the intensely interconnected and multipolar context of 21st-century ‘post-West’ contemporaneity.

    • ‘Chinese Academic Translation Project: Uneven-Line Lyrics for Entertainment Music in the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties’ (中华学术外译项目《隋唐五代燕乐杂言歌辞研究), National Social Science Fund of China (NSSFC) (Project No.: 22WZWB005). Paul Gladston, Co-investigator.

    • 20-22 May 2022 – ‘Chinese Cultures, Translation and Contemporaneity: Literature – Cinema – Performance - the Visual Arts,’ co-organized with Tsinghua University, Beijing in association with Institute for World Literatures and Cultures (IWLC) International Forum Series ‘World Maps and World Cultures.’

    • 28/29 April 2021 - ‘Rethinking the Curation of Chinese Contemporary Art,’ co-organized with the University of Maryland and supported by the Asia Society, Australia.

    • 2022-ongoing - UNSW ADA Contemporary Asia-Pacific Visual Cultures Webinar Series (est. 2022), co-organised by Paul Gladston and Minerva Inwald with Dr. Yu-Chieh Li (Lingnan – former UNSW JN post-doctoral Fellow). Series, organized partly in association with the Department of Visual Studies, The University of Lingnan, Hong Kong.

    • 2021 - Paul Gladston, member of the academic committee of the international invitational exhibition, ‘Tides of the Century - 2021’, curated by Prof. Wang Chunchen (Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing), jointly organised by the China International Exhibition Agency and the Ocean Flower Island Museum, Hainan.

    • November 2019 - Lynne Howarth-Gladston and Paul Gladston, ‘Sullivan+Strumpf at the West Bund, Shanghai’ - Sydney Ball Estate, Lindy Lee, Dane Lovett, Tim Silver, Dawn Ng and Karen Black.

    • 4 September-1 November 2015 - Paul Gladston and Lynne Howarth-Gladston, ‘New China/New Art: Contemporary Video from Shanghai and Hangzhou’, Djanogly Gallery, University of Nottingham.

    Monographs

    • Paul Gladston and Lynne Howarth-Gladston (2026 – in preparation), The Thames Arcadia Rhizome. 

    Output of the research Project ‘The Thames Arcadia Rhizome’.

    • Paul Gladston and Lynne Howarth-Gladston (2025 – in preparation), Dis-/Continuing Traditions: Interventions with Confucian Aesthetics by Contemporary Chinese Artists and Curators, London: Bloomsbury.

    Edited collections

    • Haiping Yan, Laurent Dubreuil and Paul Gladston eds. (2024 – in preparation), Transculturality and China — in the World, London and Beijing: Routledge. Transcultural Studies in China Series (Tsinghua University – UK-China Humanities Alliance).

    • Paul Gladston, Lynne Howarth-Gladston, Jason Kuo and Johnson Tsong-zung Chang eds. (2024 – in press), Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art: Cultural Diversity and Tradition, London and Singapore: Palgrave. (Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics series).

    Output of the research project ‘Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art’.

    Output of the 2021 online conference ‘Rethinking the Curation of Chinese Contemporary Art,’ co-organized with the University of Maryland and supported by the Asia Society, Australia.

    Book chapters

    • Paul Gladston (2024 – in press), ‘Somewhere (and Nowhere) between Modernity and Tradition: Toward a Polylogue between Differing International and Indigenous Perspectives on the Significance of Contemporary Chinese Art’, in Carol Lu ed., China as an Issue, London: Palgrave - English and Mandarin Chinese language translation.

    Originally published in English as Paul Gladston (2014), ‘Somewhere (and Nowhere) between Modernity and Tradition: Towards a Polylogue between Differing International and Indigenous Perspectives on the Significance of Contemporary Chinese Art’, Tate Papers 21 (Spring 2014).

    • Paul Gladston (2024 – in preparation), ‘Retheorizing Chinese Contemporary Art: Transcultural Defamiliarization and the Traces of Syncretic Confucianism’, in Haiping Yan, Laurent Dubreuil and Paul Gladston eds., Transculturality and China — in the World, London and Beijing: Routledge. Transcultural Studies in China Series (Tsinghua University – UK-China Humanities Alliance).

    • Paul Gladston and Lynne Howarth-Gladston (2024), ‘Inside/Outside the Yellow Box: Toward a Poly/Cacophonic Displaying of Chinese Contemporary Art’, in Paul Gladston, Lynne Howarth-Gladston, Jason Kuo and Chang Tzong-zung eds., Rethinking Displays of Chinese Contemporary Art, London and Singapore: Palgrave. Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics series.

    • Paul Gladston (2024 – in press), '‘Humour/Youmo in Chinese Contemporary Art and Online Visual Culture: Identifying the Intertextual Traces of Confucian-literati Aesthetics’', in Gieskes M; Williams GH (ed.), Humor, Globalization, and Culture-specificity in Contemporary Art, Bloomsbury, London.

    Monographs

    • Paul Gladston (2023), Художественные группы "Авангард" в Китае - 1979-1989 [‘Avant-garde’ Art Groups in China, 1979-1989], Boston MA: Academic Studies Press. [Contemporary Eastern Studies in the Russian Language].

    Revised translation of Paul Gladston (2013), ‘Avant-garde Art Groups in China, 1979-1989, Bristol: Intellect and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Edited collections

    Output of the 2022 international online forum, Chinese Cultures, Translation and Contemporaneity: Literature – Cinema – Performance - the Visual Arts. Co-organized by Paul Gladston and Minerva Inwald with Profs. Haiping Yan and Haina Jin, Tsinghua University, Beijing in association with Institute for World Literatures and Cultures (IWLC) International Forum Series ‘World Maps and World Cultures.’

    Book chapters

    • Paul Gladston (2023), 'Dis-/continuing traditions: Chinese contemporary art, polylogic translation and the traces of confucian-literati culture', in Translation Studies and China: Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts, 217-234.

    • Paul Gladston (2023), ‘Other Ways of Seeing: Reading Transcultural Aesthetics through Images’, Bloomsbury Philosophy Library – London: Bloomsbury History of Modern Aesthetics.

    Journal articles

    Output of the research Project ‘The Thames Arcadia Rhizome’.

    Book chapters

    Output of the research Project ‘The Thames Arcadia Rhizome’.

    Journal reviews

    Edited collections

    Output of the AHRC UK-funded research project, ‘Visualising Chinese Borders.’

    Book chapters

    • Paul Gladston, Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk and Ming Turner (2021), 'Introduction', in Visual Culture Wars at the Borders of Contemporary China, Springer Singapore, 1 - 23,

    • Paul Gladston and Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk (2021), 'Rendering Frontiers: From China's Historical Dynastic-Imperial to Modern Republican Borders and the Changing Significances of Chinese Art', in Paul Gladston, Beccy Kennedy-Schtyk and (Ming Turner eds., Visual Culture wars at the Borders of Contemporary China: Art, Design, Film, New Media and the Prospects of "Post-West" Contemporaneity, Palgrave Macmillan, London and Singapore.

    • Paul Gladston (2021), 'Foreword', in Jesse Hogan ed., Survival Aesthetics © Interview Series: On Post-Contemporary Art Practice in Japan, Japan Foundation.

    • Paul Gladston (2021), '‘#15 Change – Mountain in Full Bloom, Yicong Guo’', in UNESCO Art Collection: Selected Works, Paris: UNESCO, 94 – 97.

    • Paul Gladston (2021), '超越鄙视（当代性：论关于国际后现代主义艺术理论和中国当代艺术理论的多方对话 (Beyond Contemp(oranei)t(y): toward a polylogue of international and localized perspectives on the significances of Chinese contemporary art),', in Carol Yinghau Lu ed., China as an Issue: Artistic and Intellectual Practices Since the Second Half of the Twentieth Century vol.4, Beijing: Inside-Out Art Museum, 61 – 85.

    A new Mandarin Chinese translation of Paul Gladston (2016), ‘Beyond Contemp(oranei)t(y): towards a discursive polylogue of international postmodernist and Chinese contemporary art theory’（当代性：论关于国际后现代主义艺术 理论和中国当代艺术理论的多方对话), in Gao, Minglu ed., Criteria-Method- Context (标准-方法-上下文), Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 37- 63. Includes essays by Hans Belting and Gao Minglu.

    Journal articles

    • Paul Gladston (2020), ‘Going Over the Edge: COVID-19, contemporary artworlds, the global artistic-industrial complex and NIRIN,’ di’van: a Journal of Accounts 8, 8-27.

    Monographs

    Journal articles

    • Paul Gladston (2019), ‘Beyond the Pale: Critical Reflections on Society, and Politics Within and at the Borders of China,’ di’van: a Journal of Accounts 7, 90-103.

    Book chapters

    • Paul Gladston and Lynne Howarth-Gladston (2018), '‘Of Nühua (‘women’s painting’) and the Absenting of Ink: A Critical Meditation on Works by the Artist Fu Xiaotong’,', in Fan F; Wang C (ed.), New Debates on Ink Art: The Genealogy of Ink Art and Its Conceptual Changes – The Historical Identity Dimensions, Wuhan Art Museum – Hebei Fine Arts Publishing House, Wuhan - Hebei, 432-488.

    • Paul Gladston (2018), '‘Critical Reflections on Yu Youhan’s Paintings as a Locus of Aesthetic Modernity’', in Yu Youhan: Representational-Abstract, Chongqing: Long Museum.

Research by the Fellows

Minerva Inwald

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Journal articles

  • Inwald, M. 2023, 'The Aesthetic Needs of the Masses: Cultural Work in the Aftermath of the Great Leap Forward', Modern China, 49, pp. 290 – 319. 
  • Inwald, M. “The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives: Edited by Timothy Cheek, Klaus Mühlhahn, & Hans van de Ven, Cambridge University Press, 2021, 282 Pp., A$113.95 (Hardback), A$34.95 (Paperback).” Asian studies review (2023): 1–2. [REVIEW] 

Dr. Yu-Chieh Li

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Completed during the post

Academic
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Translating Happenings: Frog King Kwok's Abject Play,” Art in Translation, Volume 11, 4 (2020): 417-440. 
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Two-Dimensional Installation Art: The Case of Xu Bing, Wenda Gu, and Yang Jiechang,” in Xu Bing: Beyond the Book from the Sky, 87-96 (Springer, 2020).
  • Yu-Chieh Li and Sarah E. Fraser eds, Xu Bing: Beyond the Book from the Sky (Springer, 2020). 
Non-academic
  • Yu-Chieh Li and Meiya Cheng eds. “Learning from Peers,” Workshop Proceedings of events taken place at Gudskul (Ruangruppa), Jakarta, 2-19 September 2019.

Initiated during the post

Academic
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Gender and Performativity in Xing Danwen’s East Village,” Third Text 170 (May 2021): 389-410.
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Behind the Shutter: Disappearance and the Postcolonial Body in Early Sinophone Media Art,” in World Art 11, 2(2021): 177-200.  
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Rethinking/Relinking Colonial Ruptures: On Recent Works by Musquiqui Chihying and Hao Jingban,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Issue 21.1 (September 2021): 94-114.
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “Survival Tactics within Cold War Ideologies: Post-Mao Artists on the Tides of Globalization,” in Visual Representations of the Cold War and Postcolonial Struggles: Art in East and Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2021): 175-195.
  • Yu-Chieh Li and Midori Yamamura eds, Visual Representations of the Cold War and Postcolonial Struggles: Art in East and Southeast Asia (Routledge, March 2021).
Non-academic
  • Yu-Chieh Li, “This Shore: A Family Story,” Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 6, 3, p. 332-335.
  • (edited)  Affect Machine: Self-healing in the Post-Capitalist Era. Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2021.