Peter Quartermaine

Dr Peter Quartermaine was Senior Lecturer in Post-Colonial Arts at Exeter University until early retirement in 2000. Prior to university he worked for a year with Voluntary Service Overseas in what was then Calcutta, before travelling by cargo ship to Egypt and then hitch-hiking to Italy. His pioneering doctorate explored 19^th-century Australian photography and the popular illustrated press, and he has published books on Australian photography, literature and painting, and on industrial design – notably modern shipping (a lifelong fascination). Aside from maritime artists, a special interest is the London realist painter Harry Bush (1883-1957) who often depicted suburbia, and he is keen both to make this work better known, and to discover relevant contexts. He has held visual arts fellowships in Canberra, Venice and Miami Beach, has served as a consultant to the Design Museum, the National Maritime Museum, and the National Library of Australia, and has a lively interest in all visual aspects of the world we make for ourselves, including motor vehicles. Married to an Italian scholar, he speaks quite good Italian; their son and his family live in France.