Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery has been a Sydney art institution since it was established in 1982, playing a pivotal role in launching the careers of some of Australia’s most influential contemporary artists. Written and edited by Felicity Fenner, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years is a hefty monograph documenting the history of the gallery with contributions from artists, curators and notable art world figures. Over 400 artworks accompany the texts, from the likes of Jenny Watson, Dale Frank, Julie Rrap, Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt, Callum Morton, Patricia Piccinini, Destiny Deacon, John Wolseley, and many more.

Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day

Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce has been exploring the colonial trauma and displacement of First Nations peoples through the medium of glass for decades, drawing deeply from her relationships with Country and the painful history of her people’s removal and nuclear testing. Yhonnie Scarce: The Light of Day is her first major monograph, made to coincide with her solo exhibition of the same name at the Art Gallery of Western Australia earlier this year. The book features discussions of 26 major works, contributions from writers Timmah Ball, Kelly Gellatly, Natalie Harkin, and Tamsin Hong, as well as a conversation between Scarce herself and editor Clothilde Bullen.

How to cut an Orange
By Zoe Croggon

Melbourne-based artist Zoë Croggon works across sculpture, video, drawing and collage, and is well known for her photo-collages. As a former dancer, her work has a kinetic energy to it, weaving together her overlapping interests in art, literature, architecture and performance. How to cut an Orange, Croggon’s latest artist book, spans the last eight years of her practice, but also focuses more deeply on the written word. Texts include an abstract essay by poet Samantha Abdy, as well as a selection of poems by Croggon’s mother, cultural critic and author Alison Croggon.

Nicholas Mangan – A World Undone

Published to coincide with his major survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nicholas Mangan – A World Undone showcases the artist’s innovative contributions to contemporary art through his progressive sculptural and video works, which he describes as “”material storytelling”. The book includes an extensive interview with Mangan himself, as well as new essays contributed by leading scholars in anthropology, philosophy, political economy, and art history.

Reproduction
By Janina Green

German-born, Melbourne-based artist Janina Green has been creating experimental photography since the 1980s. Her layered, collage-adjacent images speak to the artist’s observations on domesticity, motherhood, sexual politics, and psychology. Reproduction is an exquisitely designed artists book featuring old and new works, often reconfigured, reimagined, rephotographed, painted over, and revived for publication. While primarily an image-based project, there is also a thoughtful essay by Pippa Milne to accompany.

Anni and Josef Albers

Published to coincide with an exhibition at The National Gallery of Australia, Anni and Josef Albers chronicles the print work of the influential Bauhaus modernists. The book includes a series of original texts that explore the influence of the Bauhaus on the careers of both artists, and how their connection to the experimental school brought their work and ideas to Australia through collaboration with creatives including artist Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, architect Harry Seidler and master printer and philanthropist Kenneth Tyler.

Flinders Lane Art Gallery: The Big Book of Little Art Essays

This is a comprehensive offering from a small but dedicated Melbourne Gallery. 536 pages showcase 110 commissioned essays and images that offer an overview of the careers and practice of 36 Flinders Lane Gallery artists, including Leah Thiessen, Kathrin Longhurst, Jo Davenport, Chelsea Gustafsson and Marise Maas. Many Art Guide regulars have contributed essays to the publication, including Andrew Stephens, Briony Downes and Steve Dow.

Screenic
By Philip Brophy

Screenic is a compact anthology of Philip Brophy’s writings on focusing on art that involves screens: projected as film in museums, digitised for installations in galleries, curated as documents within exhibitions, presented as outdoor illuminations on buildings, utilised for the production of VR and AI-generated content, & even wall murals derived from televisual screens. The pieces included were published from 2000 onwards, a time period which certainly influenced the book design, with nostalgia-drenched references to early Y2K internet art.

Cut & Pinned
By Louise Saxton

Louise Saxton has been collecting & re-imagining discarded needlework for two decades.  Cut & Pinned is a self-published hardcover monograph documenting her reclaimed needlework assemblages in exquisite detail that highlights the artistry of the craft. An accompanying essay by Professor Catherine Bell highlights the importance of preserving hand-crafting techniques like those of embroidery and lace, and how Saxton’s reclaiming of them shifts out-dated narratives of decorative arts being merely crafts, and ‘women’s work’.

Justine Youssef – Somewhat Eternal

Published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name at the Institute of Modern Art, Justine Youssef – Somewhat Eternal expands on Youssef’s investigations into relationships to land, dispossession, and the interconnected impacts of displacement. Three commissioned texts—by Latoya Rule, Chi Tran and Dr Mykaela Saunder—reflect on the solidarities and postcolonial discourse Youssef’s practice engages with, with accompanying film stills and exhibition installation shots.