This unit views the avant-garde as a changing set of conditions and concerns. This is illustrated through an examination of major European and North American art movements from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism. Although the unit is organised chronologically, emphasis is placed on the critical analysis of key premises. In particular, the discourse of originality has been central to avant-garde theories, policies and practices. Originality has appeared in diverse forms: as violent rupture, transgressions, or through related organicist metaphors referring not so much to purely formal invention as to sources of life.

Image and representation are integral elements of the contemporary world. Increasingly knowledge is produced, disseminated and interpreted through visual media. Individuals often use visual images to understand themselves and their society. This unit will introduce students to a range of genres as well as methodologies and theories related to visual analysis. Media considered include art (painting, drawing, and sculpture), photography, film, television and digital media.

This unit examines the role of digital technologies in contemporary cultural production, exploring the impact digital technologies have had on the design and construction of images, spaces and bodies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The unit traces the development of technologies from analogue, to electronic, to digital, and analyses key topics in media studies including the cyborg, virtual reality, artificial life and simulation. The unit contextualizes conceptual issues with reference to design, film, art and new media works.

This unit investigates the major aesthetic and theoretical events of Australian art in the Twentieth century. Beginning with post First World War art, significant themes surrounding modernism, parochialism, internationalism, conceptualism and contemporary artistic concerns are explored together with aspects of the international art market, museology and indigenous art making.