Francis Bacon: five decades: lectures, forums and symposia

Under the direction of Barbara Dawson in August 1998, The Hugh Lane team removed Bacon's studio and its entire contents from London to Dublin. Dawson joins us to talk about this undertaking, which involved moving 7000 objects, and of its implication to subsequent exhibitions of Bacon's work.

Macushla Robinson, Francis Bacon and the female nude Against the tide of art history, Bacon predominantly painted men. It may seem strange, then, to consider his paintings of women, but Bacon painted some erotically charged nude women and these paintings raise a fascinating question about how Bacon, a homosexual man, engaged with and represented female sexuality. This paper will tease out some of the political issues implicit in Bacon's depiction of the female form

Discussion panel with Anthony Bond, Barbara Dawson and Andrew Durham, moderated by Mark Ledbury

Andrew Durham, Francis Bacon: his painting technique This paper will look at how Bacon developed his very idiosyncratic style of painting, the materials he used and what 'chance' and 'accident' may mean in the context of the act of painting.

Barbara Dawson, director of Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane Dawson secured the donation of Bacon's studio and its contents for Dublin. She has contributed to many books on Bacon, most recently Francis Bacon and the existential condition in contemporary art (2012), and co-curated Francis Bacon: a terrible beauty (2009) with Martin Harrison - the first exhibition to specifically examine the artist's processes and materials. She is also a partner in the research project Bacon's books: Francis Bacon's library and its role in his art, a collaboration between The Hugh Lane and Trinity College Dublin.

Anthony Bond, curatorial director at the Art Gallery of NSW and curator of the exhibition Francis Bacon: five decades Bond's many projects at the Gallery include the exhibitions and accompanying publications for Boundary rider: 9th Biennale of Sydney (1992--93), Body (1997) and Self-portrait: Renaissance to contemporary (2005--06). In 2009, he curated Mike Parr: Cartesian corpse at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobar

What makes Francis Bacon’s paintings so compelling? And why is the time ripe for a retrospective of his work in Australia? Join ABC Classic FM’s Emma Ayres as she speaks with a line-up of Bacon experts about his extraordinary work, his ramshackle London studio (now preserved in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane) and his connection to Australian artists, from Roy de Maistre to Brett Whiteley. The panelists are exhibition curator Anthony Bond (assistant director, curatorial, Art Gallery of NSW), Dr Margarita Cappock (head of collections, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane), Dr Rebecca Daniels and Martin Harrison (respectively, researcher and editor of the Francis Bacon catalogue raisonné).

On the occasion of the AGNSW's forthcoming exhibition on the work of Francis Bacon, Professor Liz Grosz delivers a wonderfully innovative and sophisticated look at Bacon and Gilles Deleuze's shared examination of the forces that bind living things.