Jozef Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski, an Australian artist between Art, Industry, Science and the Academy.
Abstract
Jozef Stanislaus OstojaKotkowski (19221994) is a major figure of Australian artistic innovation whose full
significance has only recently begun to be properly recognised and contextualised within a critical, art historical
framework. From the early 1960s OstojaKotkowski’s art engaged with technology as a conduit for artistic
expression, utilising the new media of the time that promised a greater immediacy and directness.
OstojaKotkowski’s work sat at a point of intersection between art, the sciences, engineering, and the
humanities, and while this made him something of an ‘outsider’ within mainstream Australian art, his creative
research became increasingly concerned with an interdisciplinary approach leading to collaborations with
industry engineers and technicians, government weapons research scientists, and university academics, who
were all at the forefront of advancements in technology such as electronics, cathode ray tubes and lasers.
This joint paper by Dr Stephen Jones, Dr Martyn Jolly, and Anthony Oates examines OstojaKotkowski’s
research led practice, and the way that it was shaped by his connections to academia and the scientific
research establishment. The paper particularly focuses on the artist’s time as a Creative Arts Fellow at the
Australian National University’s Research School of Physical and Earth Sciences in 197172 and his key
involvement in the Australia75 Arts and Science Festival in Canberra. The reappraisal of these important
events began with Jones’ 2011 book Synthetics Aspects of Art and Technology in Australia, 19561975. It
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continued in 2013 with Theremin75, a joint project between Jones and the ANU Colleges of Arts and Social
Sciences and Engineering and Computer Science. The project restored to functionality a theremin
OstojaKotkowski had built for Australia75, and reperformed the work of new music, Legions of Asmodeous
by the leading new music composer Larry Sitsky, which had been originally commissioned for the theremin
1975. In 2014 the exhibition Colour Music, curated by Anthony Oates for the ANU Drill Hall Gallery, went on to
contextualise OstojaKotkowski within a broader historical and aesthetic framework and reveal his influence on
the practice of a new generation of contemporary artists, musicians and performers who are interested in
synaesthesia and transdisciplinary practice.