2024 art & design highlights
There are some amazing art and design books to highlight this year. From Australian art history, portraiture, still-life and First Nations art, to the most influential Australian photographer of the 20th century and Melbourne's midcentury modernists, there is a wealth of choice for the creative in your life. Below are a few books we've selected to get you started!
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art by Marcia Langton & Judith Ryan
Long before Britain’s invasion of Australia in 1788, First Peoples’ cultural and design traditions flourished for thousands of generations. Their art shaped the continent as we know it today and the societies that thrived here; but these continuing artistic practices and new art forms were disregarded by the settlers, and not considered to be ‘fine art’ until the late ’80s. In 65,000 Years, 25 writers urge us to reconsider the art history unique to this continent and recognise the artistic brilliance and resilience of Australia’s First Peoples. 65,000 Years is published in association with a major exhibition opening in 2025.
I Weave What I Have Seen: The War Rugs of Afghanistan by Tim Bonyhady, Nigel Lendon & Sabur Fahiz
Following the onset of Soviet and, later, US military activity in Afghanistan, their embedded tradition of storytelling through weaving began to feature the iconography of modern warfare. This is the publication for the seminal exhibition by the same title, which investigates the history, iconography, production and distribution of a selection of extraordinary Afghan War rugs woven during key historical conflicts in the region over the past 40 years, from the curators' shared private collection.
This catalogue includes essays by lawyer and cultural arts historian, Tim Bonyhady and Nigel Lendon – artist, academic and curator, as well as a foreword by Afghani Rug specialist and collector, Sabur Fahiz. I Weave What I Have Seen: The War Rugs of Afghanistan surveys handwoven rugs from key historical conflicts in the region over the past 40 years.
9781760764449 9781760764449
The Paintings of Criss Canning: The House and Garden at Lambley by Criss Canning
Criss Canning is one of Australia’s finest and most celebrated still-life artists. She has explored flowers, textiles and decorative objects in her paintings over five decades. For 35 years, she has lived in an 1860s farmhouse with the adjoining gardens at Lambley, a highly regarded nursery near Ballarat. Her husband’s great love of gardens and flowers have offered Canning visual inspiration at every turn. With newly commissioned photography and essays, this book strives to capture the garden, the studio, the house and the collections that are the basis of all Canning’s paintings.
Max Dupain: A Portrait by Helen Ennis
From award-winning writer Helen Ennis comes the first ever biography of Max Dupain (1911–1992), the most influential Australian photographer of the 20th century. Complex and contradictory, Dupain was a major cultural figure in Australia, and at the forefront of the visual arts. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he produced many iconic images that have passed into our national imagination, and he championed modern photography and a distinctive Australian approach.
Examining the sources of his creativity – literature, art, music – alongside his approaches to masculinity, love, the body, war, and nature, Max Dupain: A Portrait reveals a driven artist, one whose relationship to his work has been described as 'ferocious' and 'painful to watch'. Photographer David Moore, a long-term friend, said he 'needed to photograph like he needed to breathe. It was part of him. It gave him his drive and force in life.'
Rothko: Every Picture Tells a Story by Suzanne Page
This illustrated catalogue is published to accompany the retrospective exhibition devoted to American artist Mark Rothko, curated by Suzanne Pagé and the artist's son, Christopher Rothko. The show will feature over one hundred works.
Born Markus Rothkowitz in Latvia in the early 20th century, Mark Rothko began painting in the 1930s. While his early works were influenced by mythology and Surrealism, his first abstract paintings emerged in the 1940s with the Multiform series, followed by his Classic Years and the Black and Gray paintings. A key figure on the New York art scene, Rothko was an uncategorisable artist who deployed an extensive palette of colour and light with a talent that consistently triggers emotion. His great sensitivity shaped a poetic, enigmatic universe that leaves no one untouched.
Italian Interiors: Rooms With a View by Laura May Todd
There are few countries with such an established design scene, distinctive aesthetic, and universal appeal as Italy. This sumptuously illustrated survey showcases 50 of Italy's most beautiful homes, from historic palaces in Venice and mid-century apartments in Milan to sun-filled villas in rural Sicily.
With styles ranging from historic to contemporary and minimalist to maximalist, Milan-based writer Laura May Todd takes readers on an intimate tour of these inspiring domestic spaces, including residences by some of the region's best-known and beloved architects and designers of all time, such as Carlo Scarpa, Alessandro Mendini, and Luca Guadagnino.
About Face: Contemporary Portrait Painting in Australia and New Zealand by Amber Creswell Bell
Since the advent of the camera, a portrait is no longer expected to be an exact likeness. From surrealist renderings to abstract interpretations, contemporary artists have shed the convention of traditional portraiture, experimenting with an array of styles to convey the personality and character of their subjects. In About Face, Amber Cresswell Bell, the award-winning author of Australian Abstract, offers a vibrant survey as she examines the practices of a diverse canvas of portrait painters in Australia and New Zealand. The dynamic nature of both the artists and their work reflects an evolution of culture, society and creative practice.
Grounds, Romberg & Boyd: Melbourne's Midcentury Modernists by Maria Larkins
Grounds, Romberg and Boyd (1953-1962) was one of the most innovative modernist architectural firms ever to practice in Australia. Led by Roy Grounds, Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd, it would have a role in shaping many enduringly iconic and significant buildings, including Melbourne's Arts Centre and Sidney Myer Music Bowl, and Canberra's Shine Dome. After less than a decade in operation, however, this tripartite powerhouse would implode, overburdened by the weight of its directors strident personalities and striving individual ambitions.
Written by an author with direct personal experience in the administration of some of Melbourne's more noteworthy contemporary practices, it is the only book ever published on the work of the practice and it gives a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a high profile architecture firm and how it functions, or doesn't.
Screenic: Politicised Writings on Being Screened by Philip Brophy
Screenic is an anthology of Philip Brophy's writing on art, published from 2000 onwards. The focus of the selection is 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. Designed by James Vinciguerra.
Together, the articles reinforce the view that ongoing changes taking place in the mediascape over the last two decades create challenges for artists, producers, curators, viewers, and critics – sometimes resulting in a rejuvenation of how media art can be imagined and presented, other times evidencing an anaemic grasp of the contemporary mediascape that whorls outside the white cube.
Charles and Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love by Christabel Blackman
Set against the burgeoning cultural art scene of 1950s Melbourne, among the soon-to-become legendary artists of the Heide group, Christabel Blackman weaves the story of Charles and Barbara Blackman and the influence they had on each other, and on the Australian art world. With over 160 artworks from Charles Blackman, as well as never-before-seen sketches, many evocative letters, documents and photos, it is a beautiful and revealing portrait of two people, their art, and a world they changed forever.
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin
For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it?
Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body. Weaving daring links between disparate artists and writers – from Julia Margaret Cameron's photography to Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits to Eva Hesse's rope sculptures – Lauren Elkin shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political.
ngargee: Coming Together to Celebrate by Frances Edmonds, Sabra Thorner & Maree Clarke
Aboriginal art practice in southeast Australia is dynamic, innovative and powerful. This is clear from the diverse artworks in ngargee, which are a celebration of intercultural partnerships that prioritise learning with and about First Nations artists to support Indigenous knowledge systems. The works shown are accompanied by commentary and analysis unpacking complex issues related to First Nations artmaking and culture-making and showcase southeast Australian contemporary Aboriginal creatives with international and Australian co-producers.
Portrait of a Collection: TarraWarra Museum of Art by The TarraWarra Museum of Art, edited by Victoria Lynn & Anthony Fitzpatrick
TarraWarra Museum of Art in the Yarra Valley holds one of the country's finest collections of Australian art from the 1930s to the present day. Established through the generous donation of founding patrons, the late Marc Besen AC and Eva Besen AO, the museum's collection follows three prevailing themes: landscape, the solitary figure and abstraction.
Many of the artists represented in the collection – including John Brack, Willliam Dobell, Russell Drysdale, Rosalie Gascoigne, John Olsen, Patricia Piccinini, Yhonnie Scarce, Jeffrey Smart and Judy Watson – have been instrumental in shaping the development of modern and contemporary art in Australia. This richly illustrated book offers contemporary interpretative lenses on the history of Australian art since the 1930s, bringing the relevance of the collection into the present day.
How to Cut an Orange by Zoë Croggon, edited by Justine Ellis, Ash Holmes & Dan Rule
Much reveals itself in the work of Melbourne-based artist Zoë Croggon, though some cues speak louder than others.
Piecing together a selection of works made over the last eight years, Croggon’s striking new artist’s book How to Cut an Orange embraces the written word more wholeheartedly than ever before. Featuring an incisive abstracted essay by the celebrated young poet Samantha Abdy, and a selection of poems by Croggon’s mother – the renowned cultural critic, author and poet, Alison Croggon – How to Cut an Orange puts the artist’s sensuous, visceral photographic collages in direct conversation with the words and worlds that bracket and surround them. As much as Croggon’s practice is one of deep research and introspection, it also gazes outward. ‘It is perhaps about being a spectator in the world,’ writes Abdy in her essay. ‘It is about having a body in the world. It’s about being in the world.’
