The introduction to Amber Creswell Bell’s new survey of Australian abstract art begins by parsing a loose definition of the form. Abstract art is nonrepresentational, nonfigurative, nonobjective, a language for ‘the other’. It is a process that cracks open the parameters of representation, allowing a gestural, sensorial and intuitive form to burst forth.

Arshile Gorky claimed that abstraction allows one to see with their mind what they cannot see physically with their eyes, ‘abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an exploration into unknown areas.’

Bell proposes that the definition is as various as its forms, and it is with this breadth and generosity that she examines the practices of more than 40 contemporary Australian abstract painters. Following on from her comprehensive surveys of still-life artists, ceramicists, and landscape painters, Bell shifts her gaze to abstract artists including Aida Tomescu, Emily Ferretti, Louise Creswell and Lottie Consalvo.

Drawing from extensive interviews, Bell sketches warm and open profiles for each painter that feel led by the artist’s voice without being prescriptive or didactic. The vitality of the work rushes at you in a surge of vivid colour and movement; the book itself feels alive
and breathing.

This is a publication that bucks the cultural cringe of identifying with a movement or style, and instead memorialises Australian – and notably female – artists. An accessible and valuable publication.