Dr Thomas Berghuis

PhD Art History and Theory, University of Sydney
Advanced Masters Diploma, CNWS Research School, Leiden, The Netherlands
MA Sinology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Dr Thomas J. Berghuis is a lecturer in Asian Art at the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney, and a Visiting Fellow at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. Starting in 2008 Berghuis is a Consultant Lecturer at the Sotheby’s Institute of Arts in Singapore. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Gallery 4A/Asia-Austrian Arts Centre, Sydney. From June 2007 to July 2008 he worked as Senior Research Curator with the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre and the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, College of Fine Arts/ UNSW in Sydney. He completed his PhD dissertation on Performance Art in China at the University of Sydney (Australia), following an MA in Sinology at Leiden University (The Netherlands). During the past 10 years he has traveled extensively to China for his research, and from 2003 to 2004 he was a visiting scholar at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Next to his studies he has also been involved in several curatorial projects, including Associate Curator for the 6th Sharjah International Biennale, U.A.E (2003), Curator for the 1st Dashanzi International Arts Festival at the 798 Factory in Beijing (2004), and Associate Curator for the 3rd Israel Video Art Biennial in Tel Aviv (2006). Since 2007 Berghuis is a contributing editor for C-Arts, an art magazine focusing on contemporary Asian art. His writings have been published in various magazines and art publications, including in The Australian, Art Review UK, Art Asia Pacific, Artlink, Broadsheet, C-Arts, Mesh, positions and RealTime. His book, Performance Art in China, has been published in 2006 with Timezone 8, Hong Kong. Since 2006 he has been actively involved with research and curatorial projects on modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia, with special attention to art from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Research Interests

• Pre-modern, Modern, and Contemporary Chinese Art
• Modern and Contemporary Asian Art
• Performance Art
• Curatorial Studies in relation to Asia
• Theories of Global Art

Grants and Scholarships

• 2007
  -Research Travel Grant, Australian Research Council, through Associate
  Professor Jill Bennett
• 2006
  - Workshop Travel Grant, ASEF and Goethe Foundation in Jakarta, Indonesia
  - Exhibition Travel Grant, Australian Embassy Beijing
  - Exhibition Travel Grant, Dutch Embassy Jakarta
• 2005
  -Conference Travel Grant, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong
• 2004
  -Conference Travel Grant, Asia Research Institute, National University Singapore
• 2003
  - Travel Grant for the 6th Sharjah Biennale, Ministry of Culture, United Arab Emirates
  - Associate Researcher Travel Grant, Australian Research Council through Prof. John Clark
  - Post Graduate Research Support Scheme/ PhD Research Travel Grant, Australian Government
• 2001
  - Faculty Scholarship, University of Sydney (Duration 4 Years)
  - PhD Research Support Grant, Power Institute, Sydney (Duration 3 Years)
  - Post Graduate Research Support Scheme (PRRS), Australian Government
• 1999
  - Research Grant Hulsewé-Wazniewski Foundation (HWS) for the advancement of Teaching and Research at Leiden University in the Archaeology, Art and Material
  Culture of China

Membership

• Founding Member and Director of the Art Collection Jaap Berghuis Foundation (Forthcoming in 2000)
• Advisory Committee Member, Gallery 4A/Asian-Australian Arts Centre
• Affiliated Member Australian Centre for Asian Art and Archaeology (November 2006)
• Member of AICA, International Association of Art Critics (since 2007)

Publications

Books

• Performance Art in China, (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, December, 2006)

Chapters in Books

• “Performance Art and its Constraints” in John Clark, ed., The Eye of the Beholder (Sydney: Wild Peony Press, December 2006)
• “(Re-)imagining the City: Shanghai Dream-Theatre and the New Shanghai Surreal” in CIHA 2008, Conference Proceedings (Forthcoming, December 2008)

Catalogues - Peer reviewed

• “China Art Now: Performance, Photography and Video Art” in The China Project: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art from the Queensland Gallery Collection, Exhibition Catalogue (Forthcoming 2009)
• “Chinese Contemporary Art After Performance Art” in Action-Camera: Beijing Performance Photography, Exhibition Catalogue, Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia (Forthcoming, December 2008)
• “The ‘art’ of Chinese performance art” in Chinese avant-garde, Exhibition Catalogue, Gronginger Museum, the Netherlands (Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2008)
• ’Bubble’: Birth, Death and Transference in the Work of Zhu Ming” in Rachel Kent, ed., Liquid Sea (Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003)

Catalogues - General

• Tracing Ghosts: Tony Schwensen and André Stitt, Catalogue (Sydney: Campbelltown Arts Centre, Forthcoming 2008)
• “André Stitt: Performance Beyond Action” in Blair French, ed. André Stitt: Dingo, A treatment towards a new communionism (Sydney: Artspace, Forthcoming 2008)
• “Islands and the Archipelago: Cultural remembering, community belonging, and the infinite locale of the post-nation” in News From the Islands (Sydney: Campbelltown Arts Centre, 2007)
• “Trees of Remembrance, Echoes of Solace, and the Genealogy of Counting: The work of Dadang Christanto” in News From the Islands (Sydney: Campbelltown Arts Centre, 2007)
• “The Event of Performance: A Discourse of Performance Art Festivals in Asia” in The Future of Imagination 4 (Singapore, 2007)
• “Video-REAL: Recent Chinese Video Art” in VideoZone 3 – The 3rd International Video Art Biennial in Israel (Tel Aviv: Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006)
• “’Bubble’: Birth, Death and Creation in the Work of Zhu Ming”, Republished in Julia Coleman, ed., Critical Mass (London: Chinese Contemporary, 2004)
• “’Bulle’ – naissance, ort et creation dans l’oevre de Zhu Ming” in Julia Coleman, ed., Les scents fleurs, Republished in French for the ‘Year of China in France, 2003/2004’ (London: Chinese Contemporary, 2004)
• “Close Encounters – Performance art practices in China”, Peter Lewis and Hoor Al-Qasimi, ed., Sharjah International Biennial 6 (United Arab Emirates: Sharjah International Biennial, 2003), 034-038
• “Changing spectacles: Tracing patterns of historical coherence in Chinese contemporary art practices amidst the featureless models of global conduct”, “6th Sharjah Biennial International Symposium Catalogue, Art in a Changing Horizon: Globalisation and New Aesthetic Practice, 9-11 April 2003 (Publication in Arabic)
• Accréditation in exhibition catalogue Alors, la Chine? Paris: Centre Pompidou (2003)

Journals Articles - Refereed

• “Shanghai Dream-Theater]]: (Re-)imagining the City, the Conditions of Existence, and the i||New Shanghai Surreal]]” in TAASA Review, Vol. 16, No, 3 (September 2007)
• “Considering Huanjing: Positioning Experimental Art in China” in positions: east asian cultures critique, volume 12, number 3 (Winter 2004)

Journal Articles - Non-Refereed

• “Founding Principles – The Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation” in C-Arts: Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 06 (December 2008)
• “Ai Weiwei – China’s Social Consciousness” in C-Arts: Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 02 (August 2008)
• Review: ‘Parallel Conversions – Asian art histories in the 20th and 21st centuries’” in C-Arts: Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 04 (March 2008)
• "China, We Love You! Responds to the ‘China Now’ Survey” in Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art (2008)
• “’Picture Perfect’- Performance and Conceptual Photography in China in C-Arts: Journal of Contemporary Art, Vol. 01 (January 2008)
• “Performance Art and the Art of Performance” in Broadsheet, Vol. 36, No.3 (September 2007)
• “Pride and Prejudice” in Art Review 11, Digital Digest (UK: May 2007)
• “Mediated Subjects and Acting Bodies” in NY Arts Magazine (November – December 2006)
• “Diyu Guanxi” (“Relating the Region”), Review of the Biennale of Sydney 2006 in Yishi Dangdai (Art China), No. 5 (December 2006)
• “Performance and Beyond – Documenting Performance Art in Asia” in Archiving and Beyond, Online publication of workshop proceedings by the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, 2006 (http://www.aaa.org.hk/onlineprojects/webproceeding/index.html)
• “Savage Bodies and Barbaric Displays” in East West Arts, Issue 01 (September – November 2004)
• “Flesh Art: Body and Performance Art in Post-Mao China” in Chinese Type Contemporary Art Magazine, Vol. 4, Issue 5 (November, 2001), published Online at: http://www.chinese-art.com/Contemporary/volumefourissue5/flesh.htm (seized publication in 2003)
• “Well then, [what about] China?, Exhibition Review “Alors, La Chine?” in Art Asia Pacific, New York (October 2003)
• “Broadening the Scope of Chinese Experimental Art”, in Artlink: The China Phenomenon, Vol. 23, No. 4, 2003
• “Savage Bodies and Barbaric Displays” in East West Arts, Issue 1 (2004)
• “Transcending Media and the Role of Contemporary Art Practices in China” in Mesh, Online Journal on New Media Art, 2004 (www.experimenta.org/mesh/mesh17/berghuis.htm)
• “Transcending Media and the Role of Contemporary Art Practices in China” Republished in [[i||broadsheet], Vol. 33, No. 4 (December 2004 – February 2004), Adelaide

Reference

• Book review of Performance Art in China by Dr Adam Geczy in Eyeline, No. 65 (January 2008)
• Book review of Performance Art in China by Adam Jasper Smith in Frieze, Issue 109 (September 2007)
• Accreditation Gao Minglu, The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art (Buffalo, New York and Beijing: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, University at Buffalo Art Galleries, and the Millennium Art Museum, 2005)
• Accreditation in Bruno Racine, et.al, eds., Alors, la Chine? (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2003)
• Accreditation in Grady T. Turner, “Report from the U.A.E” in Art in America (November 2003)

Current Classes

Undergraduate
ARHT 2640 'Modern and Contemporary Asian Art'
ARHT 2624 'Contemporary International Art (2008 and 2009)

Postgraduate
ARHT 6924 'Asian Modernities'

Starting in 2010
'China: Art and Empire'
'Art and Visual Culture of East Asia