University of Tasmania, Australia

Professor Marie Sierra

Head - Tasmanian College of the Arts

PhD by thesis, MFA

Contact Details

General Responsibilities

Professor Marie Sierra took up the role of Head of the School of Visual and Performing Arts in 2010.

Publications

Active as an arts writer, Marie regularly presents research papers at conferences, such as the 2005 and 2006 Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools refereed conferences, and the 2004 ‘Futureground’ refereed conference on the future of design. She has written a number of essays and reviews for magazines such as Agenda, Kerb, Art Monthly and Meanjin. She also contributed a chapter to the 2004 book Invention Intervention (edited by Michael Douglas), and was the art critic for the Herald Sun newspaper for two years.

Achievements

Marie has held numerous solo exhibitions within Australia, and has participated in over thirty group shows in Australia, the US, and France. She has won several grants and awards, including four Australia Council Grants, one of which was a studio residency in Barcelona, and the most recent of which was to visit the 2007 Venice Biennale as an educator. In 2004 she held an artist's residency at 'Bundanon' in NSW, and in 2005, she spent five weeks on an exchange at Penn State University in the US. In 2004 she was in the Helen Lempriere Sculpture Award, where she and her two landscape architect collaborators received high commendation.

Marie holds a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Tasmania School of Art, completed in 1985 after migrating from the United States. While at RMIT, she completed a PhD by Thesis at the School of Architecture and Design, focusing on how the idea of nature is socially constructed. Research in this area is central to her art practice, which primarily takes form as spatial, public, and temporal interventions.

Although Marie most recently ran the department of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Faculty of VCA & Music at Melbourne University, she has also held senior university positions such as Graduate Research Coordinator and Associate Dean Research. Her interest in how art constitutes research has led her to be active in visual arts advocacy, representing the interests of practising artists through committee positions with Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces, the Public Art Committee and the Cultural Affairs Committee for the City of Melbourne. Marie is also a past board member of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and continues to perform consulting work for local government and industry in relation to commissioning and strategic planning for public art.