Associate Professor Andrew McNamara

Dr. Andrew McNamara heads the disclipines of Art & Design in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. He has wide-ranging research interests, including critical theory, Australian art, aesthetics, the legacy of cultural modernity, contemporary art & culture, architecture and design.

At QUT, McNamara teaches art history and theory and also coordinates a research group, Urban Modernities. In 2011 a previous version of the research group will publish Sweat, a snapshot of how the subtropical impacts across art, architecture, fashion, town planning & literature, particularly in the south-east Queensland region (generously supported by an Arts QLD Sector Project Grant & to be published by IMA Publications).

His most recent publication is “An Apprehensive Aesthetic: The Legacy of Modernist Culture” (Peter Lang, 2009).

Other recent projects include the research-curatorial project, “The Unwritten History of Australian Modernism” with Ann Stephen (Powerhouse Museum) and Philip Goad (Univ. of Melbourne).

This project was funded by an ARC Linkage Projects grant. It had three outcomes: 

1. a mammoth publication of primary documents, Modernism & Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (2006)
2. Modern Times: The Unwritten History of Modernism in Australia (2008) (both published by Miegunyah Press/Melbourne University Publishing)
3. a touring exhibition of the same name, Modern Times (Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; State Library of QLD, Brisbane).