Dr Ellen Kent
Dr Elly (Ellen) Kent is a lecturer in Indonesian studies at UNSW Canberra. She has worked as researcher, writer, translator, artist, educator and intercultural professional over 20 years in academia and the arts in Indonesia and Australia.
Elly sits on the Committee of Management of The Asian Arts Society of Australia (TAASA) and on the board of the Australian National University's Indonesia Institute (where she was formerly Deputy Director). Elly is the author of Artists and the People: Ideologies of Indonesian Art (2022) NUS Press, and co-editor (with Virginia Hooker and Caroline Turner) of Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History (2023) ANU Press.
Elly’s research focuses on contemporary and historical art, design and cultural practices in Southeast Asia, and especially in Indonesia. She is interested in the intersection between social change, politics and art practice and her doctoral research focused on participatory practices and ideologies in Indonesian art.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
'All of Us' translation and publication in Indonesia
Total funding amount: AUD 20,940
Description
This project facilitated the translation (into Indonesian), publication and distribution of a first edition of the recent children's book 'All of Us', in collaboration with the book’s authors,original publishers HarperCollins, and prospective publisher, Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia.
The Slideshow Project
2017 to 2018 | Grant
artsACT (ACT, ACT, AU)
URL: https://soad.cass.anu.edu.au/research/slideshow-project-2018
GRANT_NUMBER: 2017PROJ012
Total funding amount: AUD 10,000
Description:
Producer, project manager: Dr Elly Kent
Artists: Elly Kent, Rose Montabello, Heidi LeFebvre, Karen Golland, Ali Jane Smith, Hanna Bath
The Slideshow Project commissioned artists and a curator to produce work in response to vintage slides of travel in East and Southeast Asia. An exhibition was held at ANCA Gallery in Canberra in March 2018, accompanied by a catalogue, artist and curator talks and education programs.
Outcomes:
An exhibition at ANCA Gallery in Canberra in March 2018, exhibition catalogue, artist and curator talks, education programs.
Organization identifiers
FUNDREF: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001126
artsACT: ACT, ACT, AU
Entanglement: Individual and Participatory Art Practice in Indonesia
2011-09 to 2015-01 | College of Arts and Social Sciences PhD Scholarship
Australian National University (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, AU)
URL: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/117054
Total funding amount: AUD 87,500
Description
Entanglement: Individual and Participatory Art Practice in Indonesia
Total funding amount: AUD 63,500
Description:
2013 - 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Emerging Artist Prize.
https://archive.4a.com.au/tag/elly-kent/
I have a strong and developing publishing and research communication record, and a 15 year career as an accredited translator specialising in arts and social justice texts.
Co-editor and contributing author, translator: Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage History, Society and Politics (ANU Press, 2023) with Adjunct Associate Professor Caroline Turner (RSHA) and Emeritus Professor Virginia Hooker (College of Asia Pacific) under contract for publication with ANU Press in 2022. This book includes chapters by myself. my co-editors, and eminent Indonesian scholars and artists from several generations, including the first published English translation of Indonesia’s pioneering art historian Sanento Yuliman’s seminal 1976 essay “New Indonesian Painting”. I selected and translated this text with mentorship from Professor Hooker, who has been a leading researcher and teacher of Indonesian language and Indonesian and Malay social studies at ANU for over three decades. Professor Turner was the co-founder and project director of the Asia-Pacific Triennial at Queensland Art Gallery for ten years.
Sole author of Artists & the People: Ideologies of Indonesian Art (NUS Press, 2022). The first English language publication on participatory art in Indonesia and is based on 2 years of (doctoral) field research during which I travelled extensively through the region to observe and participate in artists’ participatory and studio practices, read and translate archival primary sources, collect primary source material such as interviews with artists and participants, and implement my own participatory art projects designed in dialogue with my research findings. The book places previously untranslated texts by Indonesian artists, critics and scholars from the early 20th century into conversation with ethnographical observations of contemporary practice, to create a theoretical framework that centralises discourses endogenous to Indonesian art.
Other recent publications:
Nashar, and Elly Kent (translator). "Letter to an Actor". Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 6, no. 2 (2022): 171-179. muse.jhu.edu/article/871497.
Elly Kent. 2022. "The History Of Conscious Collectivity Behind Ruangrupa". Artreview.Com. https://artreview.com/the-history-of-conscious-collectivity-behind-ruangrupa/.
Elly Kent. "Critical Recycling: Post-Consumer Waste as Medium and Meaning in Contemporary Indonesian Art." Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 4, no. 1 (2020): 73-98. doi:10.1353/sen.2020.0003.
Elly Kent and Wulan Dirgantoro. "We need to talk! Art, offence and politics in Documenta 15", in New Mandala, 29 June 2022. https://www.newmandala.org/we-need-to-talk-art-offence-and-politics-in-documenta-15/ . Opinion/editorial on accusations of anti-Semitism against Taring Padi and ruangrupa at Documenta15. This article was also published in Indonesian language on New Mandala, and republished in the Swiss publication "On Curating" Issue 54 Nov 22, and in German in the online journal Suedostasien.net on 6 July 2022 as Wir müssen reden! Kunst, Fehler und Politik auf der documenta fifteen.
Previous publications:
Kent, Elly. “Critical Recycling: Post-Consumer Waste as Medium and Meaning in Contemporary Indonesian Art.” in Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, vol. 4 no. 1, 2020, p. 73-98
———.“Batik journeys between three worlds: here there and everywhere” in Garland Magazine, Quarterly Essay, September 4, 2020
———.“Looking for Indonesia in Contemporary Art.” In Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia edited by Carol Cains and Jaklyn Babington, 22-30. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2019 (bilingual)
———. “Traditions of Dissent: Contemporary ‘Artivism’ in Indonesia.” The Asian Art Society of Australia Review 28 no. 2 (June 2019): 16-17
———. “Visual Arts and Artists” for the section: Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific (Indonesia) in Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, Brill, Leiden, 2019 edition
———. “The Sultan, His Daughter and the Artist: A Tale of Dimming Power" catalogue essay for Descent, solo exhibition by Nadiah Bamadhaj, Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, 2016
———. "You Are Here Festival", Artlink Online, May 16, 2016
———. "Biennale Jogja XIII Hacking Conflict" Artlink vol. 36, no. 1, March 2016
———. "Biennale Jogja XIII Hacking Conflict" Artlink vol. 36, no. 1, March 2016
———.and Frans Ari Prasetyo. “Siasat: Artistic Tactics for Transgression on State Authority." In Paririmbon Jatiwangi, Majalengka: Yayasan Salambar/Jatiwangi Art Factory, 2015, 37 -54 (bilingual)
———. “The Aesthetics of Collision and Failure; Heri Dono’s Participatory Art Projects.” In The World and I: Heri Dono's Art Odyssey, 193-220: PT. Mondekorindo Seni Internasional supported by Art: 1 New Museum, 2014, 193-220 (bilingual)
———. “Input:output – Exploring Participatory Art Practice from Within” in Journal of Creative and Arts Studies, no. 1 (June 2014): 1-18
———. “Mining the Self.” In Beyond the Self; Contemporary Portraiture from Asia. Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2011, 42-48 (bilingual print and online exhibition catalogue)
———. “Making it to Bandung”. RIMA: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 47, no. 1 (2013)
Fully refereed conference proceedings:
Kent, Elly. “Rasa and Everyday Kindnesses: Fajar Abadi and the Subversion of Ordinary Transactions”, proceedings from the International Conference for Asia Pacific Arts Studies Graduate School Indonesia Institute of the Arts (ISI), Yogyakarta 31 October – 1 November, 2014
———. “Semua Tempat Sekolah” proceedings from the Third International Graduate Student Conference on Indonesia: Indonesian Urban Cultures and Societies, 8 – 9 November 2011, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Research-led art Projects:
“The Slideshow Project” at ANCA Gallery, Canberra (2018) (funded Arts ACT grant)
"Lines of Sight" project at Autumn Revel, Ainslie and Gorman House, Canberra (2018)
"Sight Unseen" participatory public drawing project, You Are Here Arts Festival Canberra (2017)
“Née (Born As)” participatory stitching project, various venues and festivals Australia and Indonesia (2011-ongoing)
"People and Place" participatory and collaborative art project with children in Indonesian and Australian schools, Turner School, Mulwaree High School, Sekolah Tumbuh, SD Kanisius Dusun Sumber and Sekolah Gadjah Wong, with exhibitions in Australia and Indonesia from 2013 to 2016.
“Teman Gambar” participatory drawing exchange, Australia and Indonesia 2010-2011
In 2018-2019 I was invited to contribute to an inter-institutional curatorial advisory group that worked with the National Gallery of Australia to develop the Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia exhibition, in recognition of my expertise in contemporary Indonesian art of the past 20 years.
I co-convened an associated international conference, Contemporary Worlds: Indonesian Art hosted by the ANU, and presented a paper. The conference included presentations from scholars from Southeast Asia and Australia, placing early career academics and their emerging research in dialogue with the region’s most senior historians, curators and artists. The above-mentioned co-edited book Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage History, Society and Politics (ANU Press, 2022) was conceived in response to this event and features chapters from many of the speakers.
I am an academic peer-reviewer for the Southeast of Now Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art journal (NUS Press) and the Australia New Zealand Journal of Art (Melbourne University). In 2020 I was invited to mentor an early career Filipino researcher to develop a journal article in the Southeast of Now Emerging Writers Fellowship Programme. I also mentor participants in the Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program (AIYEP) 2020-22 (online).
Invited keynote and speaker addresses:
My most recent speaking engagement is an invitation to address the Asialink Leaders Forum in November 2021. In this presentation I will address the scale of declining support for Asian studies at all levels of the education sector and in our national collecting institutions, and the impact this has on national brand in Asia. This audience for this address will include business leaders from wide range of organisations including BP, ANZ Bank, Austrade, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, BHP, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries QLD, EY, Global Victoria, KPMG, Swisse Wellness, SYSPRO, TedxSydney and Trade and Investment Queensland.
I recently gave a one-hour hybrid (in-person and online) presentation on my research and forthcoming book for the Indonesia Project’s (ANU Crawford School of Public Policy) Indonesia Study Group at ANU, which is available to view on the Indonesia Project’s website.
My proposal to convene a webinar titled “Art and Artist in Society in Indonesia: Future Tense” for the ANU Indonesia Institute’s webinar series was accepted by the board and is published on the Institute’s website. I am a current and founding board member of the ANU Indonesia Institute (launched 2018); I emceed the Institute’s launch in 2018 and the keynote speakers’ presentation at our major conference in 2019.
During my doctoral studies I attended and presented papers at 17 international and national conferences, symposia and forums in Australia and Indonesia, in two languages. In 2014, my paper for the International Conference for Asia Pacific Arts (ICAPAS) Symposium was awarded ‘Best Paper’. I have maintained this commitment to collegial academic public speaking and engagement, convening conference panels (ASAA 2018 and 2021), presenting papers and co-convening symposia and post-graduate workshops (Transnationalism in Asian Art, HRC, ANU 2017, Australian National University, 28 September 2018. ANU Humanities Centre 2017, ANU Indonesia Institute 2018).
In 2019 I was invited as a guest lecturer to Universitas Katolik Atma Jaya’s MBA program, speaking on Contemporary Art and Business in Indonesia. In 2018 I was invited to speak at the Balai Bahasa’s annual dinner in Canberra (Indonesian Embassy), and as a guest lecturer in the ANU Centre for Art History and Theory’s course on Contemporary Asian Art. During my postgraduate studies I was invited to speak in both English and Indonesian at seminars and symposiums in various capacities, including a Global Development Based Tri Hita Karana Symposium held at Bentara Budaya, Bali by the Institut Hindu Dharma Negeri Denpasar in 2013, at the Education Forum (Bincang Edukasi) at Bandung Creative City in 2014, and at the Social Identities: Lived Experience and its Mediations in a Mobile Indonesia Symposium at ANU in 2015.
Television/video:
Appearance on Bloomberg TV’s Brilliant Ideas: Heri Dono (Episode 23, March 12th, 2016)
Video interview Beyond the Self: S. Teddy D. Published by National Portrait Gallery