There are many parallels between skin and painting. “Paint is a thin skin on a surface—a layer that transmits ideas into the world,” writes Jennifer Higgie in Thin Skin, the accompanying publication to a 2023 exhibition featuring paintings by thirty-six Australian and international artists.
Examining the documentary photography of the 1950s to 1980s might seem like an exercise in looking back, but as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, Imagining a Real Australia calls loudly to the present. It’s full of arresting works on subjects that still speak to us today, from land rights to war and feminism.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Natalya Hughes has a conflicted fascination with modernist men like Freud, Kirchner and de Kooning. Jane O’Sullivan takes a look at The Interior, the Institute of Modern Art monograph on her recent practice, and discovers difficult and provocative questions about not just the representation of women in art and culture, but also the careers of women artists in Australia.
Madjem Bambandila: The Art & Country of Kelly Koumalatsos is a community approach to storytelling. A testament to living culture, the new monograph published by Museums Victoria centres on a cultural activist and artist known for reviving possum skin cloak making in the South East of Australia.
Artist books are sometimes treated like exhibition postcards and not much more than mementos, but they grapple with intriguing questions about what to document, and how. Jane O’Sullivan reviews three artist monographs from Elizabeth Newman, Kate Tucker and Louise Haselton, and finds some very different strategies.
Video and time-based art is a mutant medium with a disjointed history. Jane O’Sullivan reviews Outside the Frame: Art and the Moving Image, which takes a snapshot of contemporary practice through 21 recent moving image commissions.
Welcome to the first iteration of our monthly book review series, where we share the latest curation of titles straight from the Art Guide Bookstore. With each instalment, we’ll celebrate what’s on offer in the world of Australian art book publishing.“Creativity is never an individual competitive practice.” Jane O’Sullivan reviews CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions Since 2008, a recent book exposing the data on gender inequity in the arts.
