Staff

  • Steven Alderton

    Director and CEO

  • Simon Cooper

    Deputy Director, Head of Studies

  • Victoria White

    Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary

  • Dr Chelsea Lehmann

    Head of Postgraduate Studies

  • Lorraine Kypiotis

    Head of Undergraduate Studies

  • John Waight

    Head of First Peoples Programs

  • Dr Ella Dreyfus

    Head of Public Programs

  • Dr Michael Hill

    Head of Art History & Theory

  • Dr Louise Boscacci

    Head of Ceramics

  • Dr Maryanne Coutts

    Head of Drawing

  • Dr Stephen Little

    Head of Painting

  • Geoff Kleem

    Head of Photomedia

  • Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig

    Head of Printmaking

  • Hany Armanious

    Head of Sculpture

  • Lea Simpson

    Head Librarian

Steven Alderton

Director and CEO

BA Fine Art (Griffith)

Steven Alderton is the Director and CEO of the National Art School with over 25 yearsโ€™ experience in the visual arts and education as an artist, curator and director. Previous roles include Director of Programs, Exhibitions and Cultural Collections at the Australian Museum; Director Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre; Director Lismore Regional Gallery; Manager Bundaberg Arts Centre; Director Redland Art Gallery; Curator Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery and Events Manager at the Institute of Modern Art. Steven established an artist run initiative and artist studios just after leaving Art College and is committed to developing and fostering emerging artists and sustaining mid to late career artistsโ€™ practice.

Simon Cooper

Deputy Director, Head of Studies

BA Fine Arts (VIC College, Prahran), GradDip Fine Arts (VCA)

Simon Cooper has practiced and exhibited extensively throughout Australia and internationally. His work is held in numerous private and public collections throughout the world including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, South Korea.

He completed his undergraduate studies in Printmaking at Prahran College, Victoria and his post-graduate studies at Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Simon has taught with a range of institutions in Australia including Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne; RMIT University, Melbourne; University of Southern Queensland; and Chisholm Institute, Melbourne. Since joining NAS in 2001 as Head of Printmaking, he has held other academic positions within the school including Acting Director, and is currently Head of Studies.

Victoria White

Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary

Dr Chelsea Lehmann

Head of Postgraduate Studies

BVA (ACSA), MFA, PhD (UNSW)

Chelsea Lehmann has exhibited extensively in Australia for the past two decades, and has been the recipient of several awards, grants, and local and international residencies. Her most recent exhibitions include Corporealities, (Home @735 Gallery, Sydney 2020), Persona (Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney, 2020), June (MARS Gallery, Melbourne, 2019), and The Articulate Surface (UNSW Galleries, Sydney, 2018). She is a Lecturer in Drawing at the National Art School and completed a PhD at UNSW Art & Design in 2019.

Lorraine Kypiotis

Head of Undergraduate Studies

MA (Uni Syd.) BA. Dip Ed (Uni Syd.)

Lorraine Kypiotis holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Sydney in Renaissance Studies and is currently engaged in a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History at the University of Sydney with a strong focus on the function of artefacts within art academies andย  institutions. Her research interests also include Women in Art, Museology and 19thย century Australian Art History. Lorraine is also a frequent and popular guest lecturer at the AGNSW and is a regular guest on ABC Radio Nationalโ€™s Nightlife program.

As the former Education Outreach Coordinator at the National Art School, Lorraine is passionate about art, education and history.ย ย She is an experienced educator who has taught in both the secondary and tertiary sectors and has been lecturing in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School since 1997. High on her list of priorities is regional and national engagement with the high school sector. She runs a number of programs, both inbound and outbound, which, as well as promoting the scope of ongoing tertiary study in art at the National Art School, foster the building of skills, knowledge and values in the fine arts.

John Waight

Head of First Peoples Programs

MA (UNSW)

John was appointed to the new position Head of First Peoples Programs in February 2022. John is from the Mangarayi people whose country is just outside Katherine. John has worked as Curator and Liaison Officer at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, and Darwin was Manager of the Maningrida Arts and Culture Shop, and Curator of Aboriginal Art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, where he delivered the 29th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award. John was also an Aboriginal Health Education Officer at Albion Health Centre and recently completed his Masters of Curation and Cultural Leadership at UNSW. John also sits on a number of cultural boards and committees, including Artback NT, Create NSW MultiArts, MAAS Indigenous Reference Committee, and the Sydney Culture Network. As Head of First Peoples Programs, John will lead the development and coordination of First Peoples academic, community and public programs, policies, and curricula. In addition, the role provides essential leadership for First Peoples engagement and public advocacy at NAS, including the development of courses, student welfare and professional practice.ย 

Dr Ella Dreyfus

Head of Public Programs

BA Visual Arts (CAI, SCAE) Grad. Dip.Vis Arts (SCA, Uni Sydney) PhD Fine Arts (COFA, Uni NSW)

Dr. Ella Dreyfus is an Australian contemporary visual artist, senior lecturer and Head of Public Programs at the National Art School. She is an award-winning artist and well known for her photographic exhibitions The Body Pregnant, Age and Consent, Transman, Under Twelve, Under Twenty, Scumbag, Intimate Distance and public installations Weight and Sea and Walking in Wiesbaden.

She won the inaugural Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture and was an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholar at the University of NSW. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cite Internationale des Artes, Paris in 2013, a Visual Arts Research Resident at the Banff Centre, Canada in 2014 and an Artist-in-Residence at the Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, Germany in 2017.

View her research projects and exhibitions atย www.elladreyfus.comย andย www.elladreyfus.gallery

Dr Michael Hill

Head of Art History & Theory

MA, PhD (Sydney)

Michael is Head of Art History at the National Art School, where he has lectured for over twenty years. His research has roamed over diverse areas, including classical architectural theory, the Italian Baroque, modernist art criticism, and Australian sculpture.ย Michael is alsoย the national artistic advisor to Sculpture by the Sea.

Dr Louise Boscacci

Head of Ceramics

BSc (Hons.) (JCU), BFA (NAS), PhD (UOW)

An acclaimed Australian ceramics artist over the past two decades, Louise is an innovative artist educator, interdisciplinary scholar of affect, materiality, and more-than-human relations, and a collaborative author on recent art and the anthropocene. In creative practice and critical pedagogy she asks bigger questions of how art and diverse artists might attune, respond, regenerate and thrive in Oceania and the Asia-Pacific in the twenty-first century.

Louise is an alumna of the National Art School in ceramics and builds on her tenure as a Ceramics Lecturer (2020โ€“2023), and a Sessional Lecturer, Ceramics (2016โ€“2020). She has lectured at the University of Wollongong (2016โ€“2018), co-developing new subject content on contemporary art and climate change as part of the Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) degree. As an interdisciplinary practitioner and thinker, Boscacci has held the positions of Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Associate Fellow (2017โ€“2022; adjunct) and was a founding member of the Material Ecologies Research Network (MECO)/Centre for Critical Creative Practice at UOW.

Louise has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, with 14 major solo and 52 group and collaborative two-person exhibitions since 1997, including significant curatorial representations in capstone events, from Clay Energy (Clay Gulgong 2010 invited Master Artist) to Clay Dynasty (2021โ€“3, Powerhouse Museum Sydney). She was awarded the prestigious Australia Council London Studio Residency for her practice in contemporary ceramics, and is a recipient of two New Work grants by the Australia Council for large-scale porcelain works conceived as future archives of extinction witness, and new ceramics and sound investigations. Her distinctive ceramics are held in the National Gallery of Australia, state and regional Australian gallery collections, and numerous private art collections in Australia, the UK, USA, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Boscacciโ€™s recent publications include the multi-author book, 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (2019) and chapters in cutting-edge projects, Postcards from the Anthropocene: Unsettling the Geopolitics of Representation (2022) and Water Lore: Place, Practice, and Poetics (2022).

Courses and Subjects Taught:ย 

  • STU100 First-Year Ceramics Foundations A
  • STU120 Wheelwork Multiplicity; First Year Co-ordinator
  • CER200 Ceramics 2 Plate Tectonics, Independent Research Project
  • STS 200 Studio Seminar 2
  • CER300 Ceramics 3 Studio Specialisation
  • STS 300 Studio Seminar 3
  • MFA1 CER400 Studio Specialisation; Subject Co-ordinator
  • MFA2 Research Supervision
  • DFA Research Supervision
  • NAS Summer School 2017โ€“2022: Clay, Wheel, Body

Areas of Specialisation โ€“ potential MFA and DFA research supervision areas:

  • Regenerative Ceramics
  • Embodiment, the Senses, Affect and Ceramics
  • Clay as Country: Decolonising Clay
  • More-than-human Ceramics
  • Sound and Ceramics
  • Ceramics and Photography
  • Ceramics and Drawing
  • Objects and Affect in the Anthropocene
  • New Materialisms and Situated Knowledges
  • Art/Ceramics and Climate
  • Art/Ceramics and Ecology
  • Art and Environmental Change (Material-discursive Investigations)
  • Feminist Studies in Art and Global Environmental Change
  • Clay/Ceramics and Time
  • Ceramics and Wit(h)nessing
  • Objects and Words/Storying/Worlds
  • Relational Ceramics Practice

Dr Maryanne Coutts

Head of Drawing

BFA (VCA), Grad Dip (UNSW) PhD (Ballarat)

Maryanne Coutts completed a PHD at the University of Ballarat in 1999 and has taught at Monash University, the Australian Catholic University, University of Ballarat, Latrobe University and the National Art School, where she is currently Head of Drawing. She works with animation, watercolour and drawing to explore the human experience of the passage of time. Couttsโ€™ work has been included in group exhibitions throughout Australia and overseas. She was awarded the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2007. Her work is held by several regional and tertiary collections.

Areas of Specialisation:

Maryanneโ€™s particular areas of interest and specialization include Drawing and Time, Animation, Narrative and Literature Theory, Poetics of Mass Media, Textiles, Contemporary Drawing Practices and Journaling.

Courses and Subjects Taught:ย 

DRA100 Drawing 1
DRA200 Drawing 2
DRA300 Drawing 3
DRA400 Drawing 4
MFA Supervision

Dr Stephen Little

Head of Painting

BA Visual Arts (Nepean CAE), Grad Dip Visual Arts, MVA (Sydney), PhD (Lond.)

Dr Stephen Little is an artist and educator and he has taught progressive, creative higher education courses since the early 1990s. Prior to his current role as Head of Painting with Australiaโ€™s National Art School he has held lecturing posts at a range of other creative arts institutions. These have included Goldsmiths College in London, Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney), the University of Western Sydney (Nepean), the Australian Catholic University and Penrith College of TAFE.

Aside from academic posts Stephen has spent many years working in different capacities with a range of galleries in Australia and overseas. These have included, but are not limited to, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the Alan Cristea Gallery (London), White Cube (London), and the Lisson Gallery (London) where he held the position of Technical Manager for five years.

The wealth of accrued experience that he now brings to his current post, in conjunction with his arts practice and his professional associations across a range of educational institutions, has provided him with a valuable and varied set of competencies that draw on theory, practice based research, and first hand experience with some of the art industryโ€™s most reputable galleries and international art organisations.

Areas of Specialisation:

Stephenโ€™s studio work draws on a range of different media as a means to extend current discourses on the limits of the โ€˜paintableโ€™. In his PhD thesisย Painting in Transit: Inter-domain transfer and material reformation, he investigated alternative perceptual models, materials, and modes of presentation to those traditionally used in the classification of painting. Stephen locates โ€˜paintingโ€™ today as being no longer wholly definable in relation to its former material tradition, but as existing within a range of material exchanges and perceptual associations that ultimately generate their own variations, relationships and internal logics.

Subjects and Courses Taught:ย 

PAI100 Painting Introduction 1
PAI120 Painting Studio Elective 1
PAI200 Painting Studio Major 2
STS200 Painting Studio Seminar 2
PAI300 Painting Studio Major 3
PRS300 Professional Studies / Painting Studio Seminar 3
MFA Supervision

Geoff Kleem

Head of Photomedia

Geoff Kleem is an artist and educator with extensive experience in teaching and research supervision. His practice though primarily photographic is conceptually driven and multidisciplinary, often encompassing installation, sculpture and other areas of practice.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1982 with works held in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, South Australia Art Gallery, National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Contemporary Art plus institutional and private collections.
He has had over 30 Solo exhibitions and participated in over 100 group exhibitions. Notably at the Art Gallery of NSW Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Artspace Sydney, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Monash University Gallery Melbourne, Australian Centre for Photography Sydney, The Centre for Contemporary Photography Melbourne, Heide Museum of Modern Art Melbourne, The Suburban Chicago USA, Yale University USA, University of Technology Gallery Sydney, PS1 Museum New York USA and the MAK Museum Vienna Austria. His work has also been included in many institutional exhibitions touring Asia and Australia.
Geoff Kleems work has been broadly discussed and reviewed in publications such as Art and Australia, Australian Art Collector, Artforum Magazine, Art+Text, Broadsheet, Eikon and Eyeline Magazine.
Awards include Professional Development and New Work grants from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, Residency Fellowship at PSI Museum New York USA, Artist Residency at the Chinati Foundation Marfa Texas USA, Visiting Artist University of Tennessee USA, Visual Arts Board studio residency Tokyo Japan and the University of Sydney Power Fellowship at the Citรฉ Internationale des Arts Paris.
He is represented by Kronenburg / Wright Artists Projects.

Dr Carolyn McKenzie-Craig

Head of Printmaking

BFA Griffith University, BFA (Hons) Griffith University, PhD (QCA) Griffith University

Carolyn Craig is an artist whose work examines the coded construction of subjectivity. She investigates inscriptive performance as an active site for the maintenance and enforcement of types of cultural normativity with a particular focus on the idea of “habitus” as discussed by Pierre Bourdieu. Carolyn deconstructs gestural actions as tropes and stereotypes by utilising her own body as a site of absurd action. The performative traces of these gestures are recorded and inverted to query the distribution and maintenance of fixity. She is one half of the artist collective BRUCE & Barry with Heidi Stevens.

Areas of Specialisation:

Carolynโ€™s interests and areas of specialization include gender and typological representations, photo discourse and history, drawing ontologies, contemporary print-media and social praxis and contemporary art.

Subjects and Courses Taught:

STU100 Studio Introduction to Printmaking
PRI200 Printmaking 2
PRI300 Printmaking 3
PRI400 Printmaking Honours
Expanded Printmedia
MFA Supervision

Hany Armanious

Head of Sculpture

BVA (CAI), PhD (UOW)

Hany Armanious, one of Australiaโ€™s foremost artists, will takeย up the position of Head of Sculpture at the National Artย School from the beginning of the 2019 academic year.ย A warm, experienced and inspirational educator, Hanyย Armanious has been teaching in the higher educationย context since 1998, as a lecturer at Sydney College of theย Arts, University of Sydney, the College of Fine Art, UNSWย and most recently as a full time permanent lecturer atย Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. At QCA heย has been responsible for the design and implementation of aย new sculpture curriculum, expanding the understanding
of the role of sculpture in contemporary art, with anย emphasis on merging skills and material possibilities withย conceptual rigour.

Lea Simpson

Head Librarian

Lea Simpson has worked in academic libraries and special collections both in Australia and abroad.
She has a Bachelor of Art Theory from University of New South Wales (UNSW), and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her primary research focus is gender within visual arts research library collections.

Lea was the UCLA Kenneth Karmiole Fellow 2019.

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