Self-Taught and Outsider Art Research Collection (STOARC)

Self-Taught and Outsider Art is art produced by people somehow excluded from ‘the art game’ – not by choice, but by circumstance. The field is made up of a mixture of socially and culturally marginal figures; almost inevitably embracing or inhabiting unconventional or eccentric views of the world, usually under-educated, and often with diagnosed mental health conditions. In Outsider Art we are witness to a conceptual space containing work by a varied group of practitioners marginalised from the ‘mainstream’. It is an international phenomenon, first described in France and Germany a hundred years ago. Self-taught art was shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art before the Second World War. As ‘Art Brut’, it was championed by the French painter Jean Dubuffet. And the term Outsider Art was coined in 1972 by the British academic Roger Cardinal. In spite of its long history, it has been largely ignored by the academy until now.

Led by Professor Colin Rhodes, an internationally acknowledged expert in the field, Self-Taught and Outsider Art Research Collection (STOARC) has been established at Sydney College of the Arts, the Visual Arts Faculty of the University of Sydney. It is a unique international centre for the academic study of, dissemination of knowledge about, and promotion to the wider community of Self-Taught and Outsider Art in Australia and internationally. It acts as a hub attracting scholars and others interested in the field, through its gallery, activities and online publication.

Works of art and archival materials will be at the core of STOARC. Recognising the importance of physical artefacts for study and the often precarious future of work in the field, STOARC will collect internationally significant art, concentrating especially on those artists not already represented in existing public collections. Selected artists will be collected in depth, whilst a study collection will be formed through a broad range of examples of canonical and less well-known figures.

STOARC will be trans-disciplinary. Its members will range across disciplinary specialisms, from art history through social sciences and medicine.

Though international in its scope, in view of its location, STOARC will have a special mission to study and promote Outsider and Self-Taught Art from Australia and New Zealand. Both nations have a rich store of work, which deserves study and much higher visibility internationally.

In the coming year STOARC will launch an online, refereed journal devoted to Self-taught and Outsider Art, host a national symposium, present a series of exhibitions, and develop a research library and archive.