Jo-Anne Duggan’s artistic practice left a rich and compelling collection of photographs which engage with Italian culture, history and art. Her work demonstrates not only artistic rigour and depth but also remarkable breadth, spanning from public spaces/places of Italian diaspora in Australia to enquiries into the re-contextualisation and museification of Renaissance art, from Australian archives of Italian migration to complex case studies on the legacy of the Gonzaga. In her research-led and interdisciplinary endeavour, Jo-Anne asked crucial questions and opened up original paths with regard to the construction of space/place, our relationship with the past and its reception, and the role of photographic art in mobilising and questioning the viewer’s gaze, starting from what she called her ‘postcolonial eye’. Her untimely death was felt keenly by the ACIS community, and this prize is a small recognition of the great esteem in which she was held by her colleagues.

 

Photographic images, as well as Jo-Anne’s CV, are housed at The Colour Factory.