Material Selves

Alex Burchmore is Lecturer in Art History and Curatorial Studies at the Australian National University, Australia. He is the author of New Export China: Translations Across Time and Place in Contemporary Chinese Porcelain Art (2023).

• Introduction, Alex Burchmore (Australian National University, Australia, Australia)Part One: Biography and Narrative1. The Entangled Lives of Still Life: Margaret Olley, Objects, Display, and Art, Chiara O’Reilly (University of Sydney, NSW, Australia)2. Self Extension: Material Agency, Intimacy, and Chance in Sophie Calle’s Object Relationships, Vanessa Berry (University of Sydney, NSW, Australia)Part Two: Adornment and Ornament3. Refashioning the Khila’ in Safavid Persia and Early Modern Europe, Samantha Happé (University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)4. Materiality, Self, and Portraiture: Charles LeBrun’s Boîte à Portrait of Louis XIV, Robert Wellington (Australian National University, Australia)5. 'Furland': Global Fur and Empires of Fashion Materialities in 1930s London, Cheryl Roberts (University of the Arts, London, UK)Part Three: Reclamation and Intervention6. Upcycling Chaney: The Colonial Detritus of St. Croix, Jessica Priebe (National Art School, Sydney, Australia)7. Chairman Mao’s Good Soldier: Red Collecting, Lei Feng, and Revolutionary Selfhood in Contemporary China, Emily Williams (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China)8. A Female Embodiment: Gendered Materiality in Chinese Contemporary Art Practices, Luise Guest (University of New South Wales, Australia)Part Four: Subjects and Objects9. Framing the Self in Early Modern Curatorial Strategies of Porcelain Display, Alex Burchmore (Australian National University, Australia)10. Furnishings of Legal Lives, Jessie Hohmann (University of Technology Sydney, NSW, Australia) and Daniel Joyce (University of New South Wales, Australia)Index

This rich and vibrant cornucopia of bottom-up, object driven studies brings fresh perspectives to the study of human-thing relations. Employing a diversity of examples and theoretical outlooks, the inter-disciplinary approach will stimulate research in material culture studies, archaeology and anthropology, museum and literary studies, sociology and media studies as much as in art history.