Meet Professor Kit Messham-Muir from the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry – researcher, author and curator. His work explores how artists respond to war and political violence, most recently through the ‘Art of Peace’ exhibition, an outcome of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) and the National Trust of NSW.
On Sundays, he spends time with his wife, friend and guitar, swapping research for rhythm. Kit was recently reunited with his very first guitar in exchange for a copy of his book!
Q&A with Kit
Describe your research in 3 words
Art. War. Understanding.
Tell us briefly about your field of research?
I study how artists respond to war and political violence, not to sentimentalise experience or to fetishise trauma, but to understand how contemporary art can reveal, complicate and even resist the forces that drive conflict. My work combines writing, curating and field research in conflict and post-conflict societies, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Timor-Leste. My next project is on the current war in Ukraine.
Research highlight
A major highlight was the ‘Art of Peace: Art After War’ exhibition, which I co-curated at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. It bought together artists from Bosnia, Rwanda and Timor-Leste whose work confronts the aftermath of war, with incredible sensitivity, intelligence and emotional precision. But the real highlight was working with those artists; amazing people, with incredible stories, who often share their most vulnerable experiences with researchers like me, and the larger audience. That exhibition really spoke from the hearts of these artists.
If you could sit in with any Faculty for a day, which would you pick?
I think it would be the Curtin Law School, particularly dealing with international law. I’m fascinated by the ways in which philosophical ideas around the group versus the individual underpin things like Raphel Lemkin’s notion of ‘genocide’ versus Hersch Lauterpacht’s idea of ‘crimes against humanity’. I think those ideas—group identity versus individualism—run underneath many of the tensions, domestically and geopolitically, that vex the world at the moment.
What are your passions/hobbies outside of work?
Like many Gen-X men in western culture, I play the guitar. And every Sunday afternoon I play in a band with my wife Loretta on keyboards and vocals, and our friend Sue on drums. And when the artists came to Perth for the Art of Peace exhibition, many of them are also musicians, so we had a great international jam evening on our balcony.
I have a guitar collection that has become a diary of my life, which includes the first guitar, given to me by my parents in 1984. I sold it to someone when I left Wales back in 1989 to come to live in Australia. 35 years later, that same guy contacted me to say he still had the guitar, he no longer plays it, and asked if I wanted it back—in exchange for a copy of my book The Trump Effect. I was very flattered and so happy to be reunited with my very first guitar. It now hangs on my wall at home.
What’s a fun fact about you that your colleagues would probably not know?
Some might know this, but I’m originally from Wrexham in North Wales, a town (now a city) that became famous about five years ago when Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac bought the town’s football club. It is the topic of the documentary Welcome to Wrexham (in fact, Andrew, the guy who returned my first guitar to me, is in one of the early episodes). I always try to watch a Wrexham AFC match when I’m back in Wales, and was at the match when the team first got promoted into the English Football League. I’m not into sport at all, but I make an exception for Wrexham.
What’s the most valuable things you’ve learnt in your career so far?
There’s a phrase in Welsh at the bottom of my Curtin email signature: Dim Heb Ydrech. It was the motto of my high school in Gwersyllt, Ysgol Bryn Alyn, and it means “nothing without effort”. I don’t know how much I learnt in high school stuck with me, but that one phrase has stuck with me throughout my career. Everything takes much more effort than you imagine it will. In any project, it’s never nothing. There’s always something. Something is complicated, something goes wrong, Covid-19 happens in the middle of one of your projects. But it’s also a valuable reminder that when you continue to push onwards, great things can happen. Never give up; nothing without effort.
What’s a piece of advice you would give to your fellow colleagues, and students alike?
Be curious—never be afraid to admit you don’t know and that you’re learning. Be generous—give people the opportunity to show how amazing they can be. And be ridiculous—the stupidest ideas are often the most brilliant ideas that just need a bit of work, because, y’know, dim heb ymdrech.
Connect with Kit
This piece was featured in Impact Focus – a quarterly newsletter bringing you the latest in Curtin research.
