Ross Gibson is a writer and researcher who also makes films and multi-media environments. His main interests are contemporary arts, communication and the history of environmental consciousness in colonial cultures, particularly in Australia and the Pacific. His work spans several media and disciplines.
Over the past twenty-five years, Gibson has written regularly for Filmnews, Art & Text, Art-Network, Cultural Studies Review, Meanjin, Photofile and Oxygen. In 1983 he was a founding co-editor and publisher of On The Beach, an influential magazine of cultural analysis that was published quarterly for several years with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts.
In addition to conventional publishing Gibson uses several other modes for communicating his research as effectively as possible. For example, in 2003 Gibson curated two major exhibitions spanning eight months at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. He also edited the major catalogue Remembrance + The Moving Image, which was published in conjunction with these exhibitions.
In the early 1980s Gibson became involved in filmmaking, as a founding member of the Sydney Super-8 Film Group and as a co-organiser of the Third Sydney Super-8 Film Festival. In 1985 he and producer John Cruthers made Camera Natura. This film on the history of white Australian landscape has won several national and international awards and has been acquired for public and private collections in Asia, the United States, Europe and Australia.
In 1990 Gibson wrote and directed the feature film, Dead To The World, for Huzzah Productions in Sydney. The film has been included (along with Camera Natura) in the MOMA (New York) collection of 100 films celebrating 100 years of cinema in Australia.
During 1997 and 1998 Gibson was the Australia Council’s inaugural Fellow in New Media. Upon completing several research and production projects in this capacity, he accepted a four year contract as Creative Director for the establishment of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne. In this role he inaugurated the ACMI Collection and curatorial philosophies, worked intensively with the Lab Architecture Studio (project architects for Federation Square) during the design and building phase and continued to research, create and foster work in a range of media, particularly in interactive and immersive digital systems and networked IT. He completed the ACMI project in early 2002.
From April 2002 Gibson was Research Professor of New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Technology, Sydney (till mid-2008). Gibson is now Professor of Contemporary Arts for Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney.
Over the past decade, Gibson has been on the Board of Directors for Screen NSW. He was also Chair of the Board for the Information and Cultural Exchange in Western Sydney, as well as being a Board Member of Lucy Guerin Inc dance company in Melbourne.
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