Forthcoming events
Thursday 30 July
6.30 pm, Fox Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, UWA
The Difficult Birth of the Self in Western Portraiture, an illustrated lecture by Emeritus Professor Richard Read
We tend to think of self-portraiture as a perennial type of art, but in this talk Richard Read shows the difficulties that had to be overcome before it gained the form we now recognise. They are very much to do with negotiating changing conceptions of the self across history and the rise of the artist as a figure of importance. The advent of a certain kind of mirror and the 180° mirror self-portrait are crucial factors in this development.
Two works on the self that are relevant to the talk are Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1989); and John Jeffries Martin, ‘The Myth of Renaissance Individualism’, in A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, ed. by Guido Ruggiero (Wiley Blackwell, 2002), pp. 208–24.
Richard Read is Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia. He has published extensively on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, film, art theory, and complex images in global contexts. In the last eight years he has published two books on landscape painting and sensory perception, served as Visiting Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge (Michaelmas term 2024), published essays on the Perth artist Theo Koning and Sydney artist Nola Farman (about whom he also edited a book of essays) and a chapter on the early art of Augusta for a book on the Anthropocene and Australian Visual Culture to be published by Routledge. He is currently completing a long-term project on The Reversed Canvas: Meta-painting in Western Painting, which follows the fortunes of the motif over several centuries and is under contract to Bloomsbury Art, London.
A poster is available here.
Past events
Wednesday 25 February
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 5, UWA
A brief Annual General Meeting, followed by
Into the Future: PMRG 2026 and Beyond – a group discussion between all members on what PMRG can and should be doing into the future
Would you like to see more social gatherings besides our annual conference, regular presentations, fortnightly reading group and quiz night? Should we be addressing more contemporary cultural adaptations or applications to medieval and early modern culture that extend beyond conference papers and presentations such as a regular film or book group? All ideas will be welcomed for discussion. Any interested members who would like to be involved in launching a group or a series of workshops in which others can participate would be most welcome.
A poster is available here.
Wednesday 20 May
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 6, UWA
Show and Tell: ‘Medieval Aesthetics in Gothic Literature’, led by Louise Pitcher.
One of the event formats suggested by members after our AGM was ‘Show and Tell’, featuring a brief presentation by a member followed by an informal chat on the topic. In addition to the presentation, there will be an opportunity for attendees to add their own ‘show and tell’ and talk about their work, reading and viewing.
We’re delighted that our first Show and Tell is a chat about medievalism in Gothic literature, led by Louise Pitcher with an introductory talk.
Louise’s starting point is that Gothic literature is littered with faux medieval features. From crumbling medieval castles to licentious monks and disgraced nobles, classic Gothic literature often takes advantage of historical medieval settings or aesthetics to justify its depiction of ‘barbaric’ or ‘taboo’ narratives. This discussion will explore how these medieval-inspired elements helped Gothic develop into a unique genre. To get you thinking about the topic, you might like to consider which Gothic-style building you think would be the best setting for a vampire attack. What about the Thistle Chapel in St Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh (1909–11; see the poster here)?
Wednesday 15 July
6.30 pm, Mathematics Lecture Room 3, UWA (note different building)
Our next Show & Tell: A Colonial Frontier in England? A discussion of the book Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens by James Boyce, led by Jennifer Hole.
Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens (Icon Books, 2020) is a book about the systematic draining of England’s fens, particularly from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, and the sometimes violent resistance of the native inhabitants (called ‘Fennish’ by the author). The author, who has previously published on Australian colonial history—Van Diemen’s Land (Black Inc., 2008); 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia (Black Inc., 2011)—looks at this drainage as an ‘imperial’ project equivalent to internal colonisation.
This topic lends itself well to our Show & Tells’ freewheeling discussion, as it touches on social, economic, ecological, and colonial history and theory with many parallels and resonances across the ages.
A poster is available here.
A map and photo of the venue is available here.