Assoc. Prof. Victoria Carruthers

I am lecturer in modern and contemporary art history and theory which includes all aspects of visual culture from 19th century to the present day. I completed a first class Honours degree at the University of New South Wales, Art and Design in Sydney and then travelled on a scholarship to the UK where I completed a PhD at the University of Essex, awarded in 2012. My doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Dawn Ades, was focused on the art of the late American surrealist Dorothea Tanning with whom I had a friendship and working relationship until the her death in 2012. Before coming to art history, I studied opera (performance) and musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (now USyd), completed a BA in literature and philosophy and a Masters by thesis on Shakespeare's late plays, both at the University of Sydney.

Book chapters

Carruthers, V and C. McAra, &lsquoMermaids and Metaphors: Dorothea Tanning&rsquos Surrealist Ocean&rsquo in T. Cusack (ed) Framing the Ocean, 1700 to Present - The Sea as Social Space in Western Art, Ashgate, London, 2014, pp. 211 -225.

Carruthers, V. &lsquoBetween Sound and Silence: exploring some connections between John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and the sculptures of Dorothea Tanning&rsquo, Chapter 6 in Art, History and the Senses, 1830 to the present, Di Bello and Koureas (eds), Ashgate, London, 2010, pp. 97-116.

Journal articles

Carruthers, V. and D. Roberts, &lsquoEmila Medková: A Female Photographer of Prague&rsquo, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 15:2, 2015, 195-209. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2015.1089819

Carruthers, V.  &lsquoExcessive bodies, shifting subjects and Voice in the poetry of Joyce Mansour&rsquo in &ldquoWonderful Things&rdquo: Surrealism and Egypt, Dada/Surrealism. Number 19, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 1-14.

Carruthers, V. &lsquoDorothea Tanning and Her Gothic Imagination&rsquo in Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, 5: 2-1, 2011, 134-158.

Catalogue essays/occasional essays

Carruthers, V. &lsquoMarc Quinn&rsquos Self: a postmodern portrait&rsquo in Trunk Volume Two: Blood, Boccalatte Publishing, Sydney, 2012

Carruthers, V. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, on-line catalogue essay, Tate Publishing, London, 2010/revised and updated June 2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-eine-kleine-nachtmusik-t07346/text-catalogue-entry

Carruthers, V. Some Roses and Their Phantoms, on-line catalogue essay, Tate Publishing, London, 2010/revised and updated June 2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-some-roses-and-their-phantoms-t07987/text-catalogue-entry

Carruthers, V. Fetish to Serve As Pincushion, on-line catalogue essay, Tate Publishing, London, 2010/revised and updated June 2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-pincushion-to-serve-as-fetish-t07988/text-catalogue-entry

Carruthers, V. A mi-voix, on-line catalogue essay, Tate Publishing, London, 2010/revised and updated June 2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-a-mi-voix-t00298/text-catalogue-entry

Carruthers, V. Reclining Nude, on-line catalogue essay, Tate Publishing, London, 2010/revised and updated June 2012. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/tanning-nue-couchee-t07989/text-catalogue-entry

My research interests are broad and reflect my education in the Humanities - for this reason, I would consider my research practices genuinely interdisciplinary. To add to my perenial interest in modernism and women's art practice throughout the 20th century, I am increasingly interested in the intersection of politics and visual culture.  I am currently looking at women artists of the former Soviet Union, particularly those involved with the underground Czech surrealists and, I am also working on a cross-institutional research project (with the School of Ecomomics and Marketting, Macquarie University) analysing visual representations of business leaders in the popular press to discover what they might tell us about the nature of individualism in a globalised world.

Publications include essays on Tanning&rsquos work and its relationship with: the soundscapes of John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen in Art, History and the Senses (Ashgate 2010) gothic aesthetics in the Journal of Surrealism in the Americas (2012) and, in nautical imagery in Framing the Ocean, 1700 to Present - The Sea as Social Space in Western Art, (Ashgate, 2014). I have also written on a range of modernist women artists, including  an examination of the surrealist poetry of Joyce Mansour in Dada/Surrealism (2013) and Czech photograpgher Eve Medokova, in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art (2015)..  I am currently working on a critical monograph of Dorothea Tanning&rsquos work, entitled Transformations, commissioned by Ashgate and due for publication in 2019.

I am currently supervising two PhD students and several Honours students.