Dr Janine Burke
PhD (Deakin University), MA (La Trobe University), BA, Hons (University of Melbourne)
Janine Burke curriculum vitae [
104 kb]
Biography
I'm an art historian, biographer, novelist and curator. After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1974, I curated 'Australian Women Artists: 1840-1940' and, the following year, co-founded the Victorian Women's Art Movement and LIP, a feminist arts journal. From 1977-1982, I lectured in art history at the Victorian College of the Arts. I resigned to explore a long cherished ambition to write fulltime and spent the next years living in Italy and France. During that time, I was writing fiction and my novel Second Sight won the 1987 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. While a trustee of Heide Museum of Modern Art (1996-2005), I wrote books and curated exhibitions about the Heide modernist circle.
Recently, with the co-operation of the Freud Museum London, I curated 'Sigmund Freud's Art Collection: An Archaeology of the Mind' for Monash University Museum of Art and Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney. My latest book, Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing examines the regenerative, transformative effects of nature on Picasso, Virginia Woolf and Monet, among others. Personal View: Photographs 1978-1986, book of my photographs of the Melbourne artworld, will be published by Monash University Publishing in May 2011. The publication will coincide with an exhibition of the photographs at the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery.
Research interests
Space/Place
The role of home and landscape in the work/lives of modernist artists/writers where natural and built environments are examined as co-existing intimate and inspirational zones.
Collaborations
Dynamic creative partnerships between artists and writers that challenge notions of artmaking as a solitary/male and focus on creative partnerships that lead to first rate artworks as well to flourishing cultural milieux. My research focuses on reciprocity, the elective affinities that foment artistic breakthroughs.
Psychoanalytic approaches to art and writing
Surrealist painting, photography and film, especially women Surrealists
Selected publications
- Burke, J. (2009) Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing Sydney, Allen and Unwin.
- Burke, J. (2006) The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Art Collection Sydney, Knopf.
- Burke, J. (2004) The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide Sydney, Knopf.
- Burke, J. (2002) Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker Sydney, Knopf.
- Burke, J. (1990) Field of Vision, A Decade of Change: Women's Art in the Seventies Melbourne, Viking.