Art + Australia

Art + Australia
Editor-in-chiefSu Baker
EditorJeremy Eaton
CategoriesArt
FrequencyBiannual
FounderMervyn Horton
Founded1963
CompanyVictorian College of Arts
CountryAustralia
Based inSouthbank, Victoria
LanguageEnglish
Websiteartandaustralia.com
ISSN0004-301X
OCLC60628388

Art + Australia is a biannual magazine, and the country's longest-running art journal. It succeeded Art in Australia in 1963 as Art and Australia, and changed from Art & Australia to its current name in 2015. In August 2022 the magazine became a digital-only publication.

History

1960s

The magazine was first published by Sam Ure Smith in May 1963 as Art and Australia.[1] It followed Sam's father Sydney Ure Smith's publication Art in Australia, which was in print from 1916 until 1942, when war restrictions caused its demise.[2]: 27  Ian Burn has noted that between the cessation of Art in Australia in 1942, and 1963 when Art and Australia commenced publication, no regular art periodicals circulated nationally, except for the Contemporary Art Society's broadsheet and that an "art boom" in the 1960s presented "an opportune time" to launch Art and Australia.[3]: 55–56  Its second issue was hailed by the Canberra Times:[4]

Art and Australia is a handsomely produced work containing a collection of articles on Leonard French, Margaret Preston and West coast United States painting, together with a piece on Australian architecture, another on British sculpture, and some editorial comment.

Humphrey McQueen identifies Art and Australia as one of the first glossies to exploit advances in offset colour printing on quality stock in Australia.[5]: 96  However, Donald Brook, taking issue with the "too expensive" 1964 cover price concludes that:[6]

It is not, in general, a slick magazine, but one which seems ready to deal straightforwardly with anything interesting and admirable in Australian art, and to set it (if rather tentatively) in an international context. It is extremely well produced, neither chi-chi nor stuffy, but attractive to handle and to look at. It has book reviews of decent length, in which there is room for useful discussion.

1970s–1980s

From 1963 to 1983, Mervyn Horton was the magazine's founding editor[7] when it faced competition from of Artlink in Adelaide and Art & Text in Melbourne, both in 1981, and Praxis X in Perth, in 1983.[8] International artists visiting and exhibiting in Australia were given coverage in such articles as Daniel Thomas's consideration of performance art in 'Moorman and Paik in Australia' in the September 1976 issue,[9] while attention was paid to Australian artists' activities overseas, as when Ian Burn, in ‘Conceptual Art as Art’, published in Art and Australia in September 1970, examined another avant-garde movement through the example of Robert Jacks.[10]

1990s

After Horton's death in 1983 Elwyn Lynn became editor, followed by Jennifer Phipps and Leon Paroissien, Dinah Dysart, Hannah Fink and Laura Murray Cree. As Anderson notes, under Dysart's editorship the winter issue of 1993 examined contributions to Australian art made by European émigrés as artists and architects, art historians and dealers.[11] In 1993, Art and Australia included ART and AsiaPacific as a supplement, then as a stand-alone quarterly publication from November 1993.[12] That year, Sam Ure Smith, then 71, sold the magazine and his company, Fine Arts Press to Switzerland-based American publisher Martin Gordon (1933–2015) founder of Gordon and Breach, who also secured art book publisher Craftsman House for A$570,000, equivalent to A$2.05 million in 2022, also 21C: The Magazine of Culture, Technology And Science,[12] and started Art AsiaPacific, before illness and financial problems necessitated his selling both companies, for a nominal sum, to associate Rhonda Fitzsimmons who after divesting of liabilities retained Art & Australia for its advertising revenue.[13]

2000s

In 2003, Parson's School-trained artist and art collector Latvian-born Eleonora Triguboff,[14][15] wife of investment manager Michael Triguboff (nephew of property developer Harry Triguboff), became owner, editor and publisher.[16][2] Proclaiming that "as a sculptor I always wanted to be involved in a magazine," her ambition was to increase circulation of the magazine beyond its then 10,000.[17] Her purchase of the most lucrative asset of Fine Art Publishing meant the sale of the less profitable Art AsiaPacific to Chinese businessman-artist, Xhao Gang in New York,[17] and of the 21-year-old book publishing arm Craftsman House, to Thames & Hudson.[18]

Since 2006,[19] winners of the Art & Australia/ANZ Bank (later Credit Suisse) Private Banking Contemporary Art Award – awarded to Australian and New Zealand emerging artists – have appeared on the magazine's back cover (see § Selected cover artists).[16] In 2008, the magazine, with Dott Publishing in Paddington, New South Wales, released the survey Current: contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand.[20][21]

In August 2013, the print magazine celebrated fifty years, was rebadged as ARTAND Australia,[2] and the 201st issue – volume 51, number 1 in August 2013 – featured a redesign by Melbourne-based design firm Fabio Ongarato Design.[22] In 2014, ARTAND Australia migrated the magazine to a fully online presence to focus on art book publication with Dott Publishing, its imprint. In 2015, Triguboff donated Art & Australia, rebadged Art + Australia, to the Victorian College of Arts,[23][24] before it was relaunched in October 2020.[25] In the period between 2015 and 2021, Art + Australia published biannual, thematic issues that charted the geopolitical conditions of contemporary artistic practice.

In 2022, Art + Australia became a digital-only publication, with discussions, criticism and reflections on contemporary artistic practice from Australia and abroad, releasing contributions by Peta Clancy, Jahkarli Romanis and Kirsten Garner Lyttle, Lisa Liebetrau, Thomas Moran, Loqui Paatsch, Aimee Dodds and Tim Burns, Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, Caitlin Hughes, Jacqui Shelton and Roberta Joy Rich, Jane O’Sullivan, Elly Kent, Stephanie Siu, Zoe Theodore, Natasha Bullock, and Erica Tarquinio in the two-part issue 'The Fever' in May 2025.[24]

Online archive

The Art + Australia website, hosted at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and supported by the bequest of Western Australian dermatologist, art collector, and philanthropist Harold Schenberg, is a platform to share the magazine archive of over fifty years and daily news. Past issues of the magazine from 1963 to the present were scanned in entirety in two levels of resolution and made openly available online in 2024.[24]

Reception

Green and Barker in 2025 place Art and Australia of the 1970s amongst "coffee-table-friendly, glossy" art magazines that promoted the "status quo" against a growing competition starting with Other Voices, a journal of art criticism edited by Terry Smith and Paul McGillick, who intended to offer an alternative to Art and Australia, still "the only Australian art magazine professionally and continuously published at the time",[26] by presenting "serious writing about the newest art".[27] Indeed, in September 1967 the magazine devoted a special issue to the retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW honouring Australian painter Sidney Nolan's 50th year.[28] Nevertheless Wilson (2009) highlights the magazine's prescience, amongst the international journals also read by local artists – Art International, Artforum and ARTnews – even before the 1968 seminal exhibition The Field was staged at the new campus of the National Gallery of Victoria:[29]

In [the Art and Australia] March 1966 issue, the Australian sculptor Clement Meadmore...contributed the article ‘New York Scene II – Colour as an Idiom’, with full-colour reproductions of paintings by Gene Davis, Barnett Newman, Jules Olitski, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. Therefore, when The Field finally opened in Melbourne, the work which it presented already had its supporters and its detractors and Australian art critics were chomping at the bit.

Mendelssohn writing in 2014, considered Art & Australia "the most significant continuing publication on Australian art. It has often been the first published source of information and research on Australian artists, and has a long-standing practice of reviewing books on Australian art and major exhibitions".[2]

Editors

Current (as of 2025)

  • 2003: Eleonora Triguboff
  • 2016: Su Baker, editor-in-chief
  • 2016: Edward Colless
  • 2016: Tessa Laird, online editor
  • 2023: Jeremy Eaton, editor

Past

  • 1963–1983: Mervyn Horton
  • 1983–1986: Elwyn Lynn
  • 1987–1987: Jennifer Phipps
  • 1987–1992: Leon Paroissien
  • 1990–1996: Dinah Dysart
  • 1996–1997: Hannah Fink
  • 1997–2003: Laura Murray Cree
  • 2003–2006: Claire Armstrong
  • 2006–2008: Katrina Schwarz
  • 2007–2012: Michael Fitzgerald

Editorial Advisers

The magazine has involved distinguished editorial advisers.

Current (as of 2025)

Past

Selected contributors

Selected cover artists

Book publications

Art & Australia Pty Ltd was the publishing house that printed Art & Australia and which, with Dott Publishing, produced art books and artist collaborative books including:

  • Kent, Rachel; Croft, Brenda L. (2008). Current : contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand. Dott Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9805034-0-1.
  • Barton, Del Kathryn; Wilde, Oscar (2013). Oscar Wilde's The nightingale and the rose (3rd ed.). Art & Australia. ISBN 978-0-646-57684-8.
  • Art & Australia, ed. (2014). Chinese zodiac. Introduction by Benjamin Law. Dott Publishing. ISBN 978-0-646-92738-1.
  • Art & Australia (2016). Colless, Edward (ed.). Artist's choice : five decades of artists' writing : essays from Art & Australia magazine 1967-2014 (1st ed.). Dott Publishing an imprint of Artand Foundation. ISBN 978-0-646-92695-7.
  • Castro, Brian; Carter, Paul; Young, John; Colless, Edward; Castro, Brian; University of Adelaide. EU Centre for Global Affairs, (funding body.); University of Adelaide J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice (2017). Macau days : Dias de Macau = Aomen sui yue. Southbank, Melbourne: Art + Australia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9953925-2-6.
  • van Schaik, Jan, ed. (2018). Writing & concepts 2016. A+A Publishing, Victorian College of the Arts. ISBN 978-0-9953925-6-4.
  • Colless, Edward; Duchamp, Marcel, eds. (2018). Apostrophe Duchamp: A 'Duchampian double-cross and disjecta membra or an antarctic aporia, apophatic apologia, apodeictic apotheosis, apogryphal antidote, antipathetic apostasy, antagonistic antiparticle, and antipodal atrocity A'. Document series. Southbank Victoria: Art + Australia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9953925-5-7.
  • Green, Charles; Cattapan, Jon, eds. (2021). Afterstorm: Gardens, Art, Conflict. Southbank, Victoria: Art + Australia Publishing. ISBN 9780648547457.
  • Russell, Francis; Attwood, David, eds. (2020). The art of laziness : contemporary art and post-work politics. A+A Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9924589-0-4.
  • Colless, Edward; Eastwood, David; Lehmann, Chelsea; Thomas, Paul, eds. (2022). Dark eden : transdisciplinary imaging at the intersections of art, science and culture. A+A Publishing and Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. ISBN 978-0-645-54430-5.
  • Gerbutt, Michael; Ashrafi, Soheil, eds. (2024). The nomadic image : explorations at the intersections of art, science, and culture. A+A Publishing and Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. ISBN 978-0-7340-5721-1.

References

  1. ^ Art + Australia, Art and Australia Pty. Ltd, 1963, ISSN 0004-301X
  2. ^ a b c d Mendelssohn, Joanna (30 October 2014). Griffen-Foley, Bridget (ed.). A Companion to the Australian Media. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
  3. ^ Burn, Ian (1988). The Necessity of Australian Art. Sydney: Power Publications. ISBN 9780909952136.
  4. ^ F.W. (7 December 1963). "Paper Backs On Art And Architecture". The Canberra Times. Vol. 38, no. 10713. Australian Capital Territory. p. 22. Retrieved 4 October 2025 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ McQueen, Humphrey (30 October 2014). Griffen-Foley, Bridget (ed.). A Companion to the Australian Media. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
  6. ^ Brook, Donald (19 September 1964). "Reviewing The Dobell Number". Canberra Times. p. 13. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
  7. ^ Lyons, Mollie (10 February 1965). "Social Roundabout". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 32, no. 37. Australia. p. 12. Retrieved 4 October 2025 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^ Denholm, Michael (June 1996). "A Changing Scene—Australian Art Since the 1960s". Antipodes. 10 (1). Wayne State University Press: 6.
  9. ^ Anderson, Jayne (25 December 2021). "The invention of curatorship in Australia. Review of: Recent Past. Writing Australian Art by Daniel Thomas, edited by Hannah Fink and Steven Miller, Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales/Thames and Hudson, 1 December 2020, pp. 348, 119 col. plates, 14 b. & w. illus., Aus. $. 64.99. ISBN. 9781741741506". Journal of Art Historiography. 25: 2.
  10. ^ Anderson, Peter (March 2015). "Conceptual and Perceptual: The early artists' books of Robert Jacks". The Latrobe Journal. 95: 77–92 & 119–122.
  11. ^ Anderson, Jaynie (January 2000). "Art history's history in Melbourne: Franz Philipp in correspondence with Arthur Boyd". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. 1 (2): 112. doi:10.1080/14434318.2000.11432672. ISSN 1443-4318.
  12. ^ a b Hi, Chloe (9 March 2025). "The Printed Page: Fine Arts Press and the Publishing of ART and AsiaPacific in Australia (1993-2003)". Art & Market. Retrieved 8 October 2025.
  13. ^ Wyndham, Susan (1 May 2002). "The fine art of survival". Sydney Morning Herald. p. 14.
  14. ^ Dow, Steve (20 August 2016). "Eyes Wide Open: Art". The Australian Financial Review. Melbourne. p. 34.
  15. ^ Lawrence, Beverly Hall (22 March 1990). "For The Birds? Hardly". Newsday (Suffolk Edition). Melville, New York. p. 187.
  16. ^ a b Dow, Steve (20 August 2016). "Eleonora Triguboff champions the importance of emerging artists". The Financial Review.
  17. ^ a b Wyndham, Susan (14 March 2003). "Publishing: Not so much a job as a 'privilege' for new owner of respected arts journal". Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, N.S.W. p. 16.
  18. ^ Mutter, John (1 September 2003). "The Wizards of Oz". Publishers Weekly. 250 (35). New York: 52.
  19. ^ "NAVA's Key Achievements". NAVA. Retrieved 6 October 2025.
  20. ^ Art & Australia, ed. (2008). Current: contemporary art from Australia and New Zealand. Paddington, N.S.W: Dott Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9805034-0-1.
  21. ^ Higson, Rosalie (18 November 2008). "Swept up in the current". The Australian. Canberra, A.C.T. p. 10.
  22. ^ Evamy, Michael (2012). Logotype. London: Laurence King Pub. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-85669-894-8.
  23. ^ ARTAND Foundation (2015). "Art & Australia Gifted to Victorian College of the Arts". ARTAND Foundation. Archived from the original on 24 April 2019. Retrieved 4 October 2025.
  24. ^ a b c "Launch: Art + Australia Digital Archive and 'The Fever'". Buxton Contemporary. Retrieved 6 October 2025.
  25. ^ "Launch | Art + Australia relaunch by Bill Henson at ACCA - Melbourne Art Network". Melbourne Art Network - Art History in Melbourne. 27 October 2020. Retrieved 7 October 2025.
  26. ^ Green, Charles; Barker, Heather (June 2011). "No place like home: Australian art history and contemporary art at the start of the 1970s". Journal of Art Historiography. 4. Department of Art History, University of Birmingham.
  27. ^ Green, Charles; Barker, Heather Renée (2025). When modern became contemporary art: the idea of Australian Art, 1962–1988. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-040-14496-1.
  28. ^ "Magazine marks Retrospective". Canberra Times. 30 September 1967. p. 11. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
  29. ^ Wilson, Natalie (2009). Tackling The Field. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales. ISBN 978-1-74174-046-2.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.