Catalogue to accompany exhibition investigating two main streams of Symbolist art in Australia: works by artists who trained or lived overseas and drew directly from European Symbolist genres; and works by artists in Australia who referenced Symbolism to define a local experience.
My Aboriginal Generation Is Cool There are so many different Aboriginal symbols and languages, they vary from tribe to tribe. There were roughly 600 tribes and around 500 people in a tribe – a population of around 300,000 when Capt. Cook arrived in Australia. To date, the Aboriginal population is over 548,000. It is sad that the population of other races has increased over ten times that of the Aborigines despite its being the oldest race known to mankind, 65,000 years old. I hope that in this book, you see how beautiful and important the Aboriginal history and culture are and how we all can enjoy it.
Special Focus: Law and Literature This special focus issue of Symbolism takes a look at the theoretical equation of law and literature and its inherent symbolic dimension. The authors all approach the subject from the perspective of literary and book studies, foregrounding literature’s potential to act as supplementary to a very wide variety of laws spread over historical, geographical, cultural and spatial grounds. The theoretical ground laid here thus posits both literature and law in the narrow sense. The articles gathered in this special issue analyse Anglophone literatures from the Renaissance to the present day and cover the three major genres, narrative, drama and poetry. The contributions address questions of the law’s psychoanalytic subconscious, copyright and censorship, literary negotiations of colonial and post-colonial territorial laws, the European ‘refugee debate’ and migration narratives, fictional debates on climate change, contemporary feminist drama and classic 19th-century legal narratives. This volume includes two insightful analyses of poetic texts with a special focus on the fact that poetry has often been neglected within the field of law and literature research. Special Focus editor: Franziska Quabeck, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.
Patterns of Australia represents a series of Australian landscapes and habitats (including the rainforest, desert, waterhole, coastal/ocean, bush, river, sky, wetlands, night-time and wildflowers) in "patterns", as seen through the eyes of acclaimed indigenous artist Bronwyn Bancroft. Ages 5+
Victor Majzner arrived in Australia in 1959 as a Jewish refugee from Russia. His career as a painter accelerated during the 1980s when, as a migrant seeking identity, he began to travel inland and study the antiquity of the ancient continent as well as forming close bonds with several important Aboriginal artists from the Warmun Community in the Northern Territory. His spectacular and unconventional paintings deal with issues of identity and, over recent years, with his developing sense of his Jewish heritage. Some paintings, more surreal than his Australian landscapes, emerged from his late 1990s travels to the Negev Desert in Israel. A feature to this book is its inclusion of pen and ink studies made as preliminaries to the major paintings.Leigh Astbury teaches art history at Monash University, Melbourne.This book also comes as a special edition with original etching by Victor Majzner and a slip-case.
This book explores the fin de siècle, an era of powerful global movements and turbulent transition, in Australia and beyond through a series of biographical microhistories. From the first wave feminist Rose Summerfield and the working class radical John Dwyer, to the indigenous rights advocate David Unaipon and the poet Christopher Brennan, Hearn traces the transnational identities, philosophies, ideas and cultures that characterised this era. Examining the struggles and aspirations of fin de siècle lives; respect for the rights of women and indigenous peoples, the injustices and hardship inflicted on working men and women, and the ways in which they imagined a better world, this book examines the transformation and renewal brought about by fin de siècle ideas. It examines the distinctive characteristics of this 'great acceleration' of economic, technological and cultural forces that swept the globe at the turn of the 19th century both within an Australian context and on the world stage. Asserting that the fin de siècle was significant for the making of modern Australia, and demonstrating the impact Australian fin de siècle lives had on the transnational and global movements of the era, Mark Hearn traces the turbulent nature of the fin de siècle imagination in Australia, and its response to these dynamic forces.
A Companion to Australian Art is a thorough introduction to the art produced in Australia from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to the early 21st century. Beginning with the colonial art made by Australia’s first European settlers, this volume presents a collection of clear and accessible essays by established art historians and emerging scholars alike. Engaging, clearly-written chapters provide fresh insights into the principal Australian art movements, considered from a variety of chronological, regional and thematic perspectives. The text seeks to provide a balanced account of historical events to help readers discover the art of Australia on their own terms and draw their own conclusions. The book begins by surveying the historiography of Australian art and exploring the history of art museums in Australia. The following chapters discuss art forms such as photography, sculpture, portraiture and landscape painting, examining the practice of art in the separate colonies before Federation, and in the Commonwealth from the early 20th century to the present day. This authoritative volume covers the last 250 years of art in Australia, including the Early Colonial, High Colonial and Federation periods as well as the successive Modernist styles of the 20th century, and considers how traditional Aboriginal art has adapted and changed over the last fifty years. The Companion to Australian Art is a valuable resource for both undergraduate and graduate students of the history of Australian artforms from colonization to postmodernism, and for general readers with an interest in the nation’s colonial art history.
It's time for some straight talk about Australia's future. We need a head of state who shares a genuine affinity with our country. True independence does not require us to relinquish affection for the Queen or downplay excitement about a royal birth or wedding. Rather it is a chance for national renewal, and to lend an Australian dignity to the highest office in the land. In short: to decide what kind of country we want to live in. Featuring forewords by Malcolm Turnbull and Wayne Swan, Project Republic unites a range of passionate Australian voices to show why Australia must become a republic – and how we can get there from here. Henry Reynolds / Thomas Keneally / Larissa Behrendt / John Hirst / Julian Morrow / Helen Irving / Mark Tredinnick John Warhurst / David Morris / George Williams / Joy Mccann / Erika Smith / Anthony Dillon / Paul Pickering / James Curran / David Donovan / George Winterton