FACULTY
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.
Dr Yolunda Hickman
Interim Head of Learning and Teaching
BFA (Whitecliffe)
MFA (UoA)
DocFA (UoA)
Yolunda Hickman works in the wider fields of painting and drawing, aiming to test the potential of images and communication systems. She has exhibited extensively in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally including the exhibitions Domestic Sects at Neon Park (Melbourne); Size at Te Tuhi (Auckland); Crossings at Adam Art Gallery (Wellington); Shoaling at Blue Oyster (Dunedin); and Zombies Everywhere at Sumer Fine Arts (Tauranga). In 2019, Yolunda was awarded the 4Plinths Sculpture Commission by the Wellington Sculpture Trust, with Signal Forest opening the following year on the Te Papa Tonagrewa forecourt. In 2016, she travelled to Canada for a residency at Banff Centre for the Arts and was also part of the RM Summer Residency, Auckland.
Yolunda teaches across the postgraduate programmes at National Art School and completed her doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2020.
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 and institutions. Her research interests also include Women in Art, Museology and 19th century Australian Art History. Lorraine is also a frequent and popular guest lecturer at the AGNSW and is a regular guest on ABC Radio National’s Nightlife program.
As the former Education Outreach Coordinator at the National Art School, Lorraine is passionate about art, education and history. 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.
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 at www.elladreyfus.com and www.elladreyfus.gallery
Dr Michael Hill
Head of Art History & Theory
Dr Louise Boscacci
Head of Ceramics
BSc (Hons.) (JCU)
BFA (NAS), PhD (UOW)
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 Australia’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 industry’s most reputable galleries and international art organisations.
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. Coutts’ 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.
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.
Alex Kershaw
Acting Head of Photomedia
BFA (Hons.) (UNSW)
MFA (UNSW)
MA (UCSD)
PhD (UCSD)
Dr Alex Kershaw is an artist, writer and educator. As an artist, he works in photography, video installation and documentary film. As a scholar, he connects photographic history and theory with other fields concerned with intersubjective and multi-species encounters such as ethnography, material culture and performance studies. He holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice from the University of California at San Diego and an MFA from the University of New South Wales, Art and Design. He has written for journals such as FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism and exhibited work at venues such as—Tokyo Wonder Site, Japan; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Australian Centre for Photography, Australia; Jeu de Paume, France; Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany; and Matucana 100, Chile.
Hany Armanious
Head of Sculpture
BVA (CAI)
PhD (UOW)
Hany Armanious, one of Australia’s foremost artists, will take up the position of Head of Sculpture at the National Art School from the beginning of the 2019 academic year. A warm, experienced and inspirational educator, Hany Armanious has been teaching in the higher education context since 1998, as a lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, the College of Fine Art, UNSW and most recently as a full time permanent lecturer at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. At QCA he has been responsible for the design and implementation of a new sculpture curriculum, expanding the understanding of the role of sculpture in contemporary art, with an emphasis on merging skills and material possibilities with conceptual rigour.