This research was originally delivered as a paper at the European Australian Studies Association annual conference, Toulouse 1999. Conference convenor Xavier Pons drew together speakers on Patrick White, Murray Bail, larrikin movies of the 1970s and a remarkable range of other topics from European scholars. I’ve taken the opportunity here to correct a few minor […]
I wrote this piece as a first step towards mapping what I thought might be a distinctive characteristic of Australian art (and perhaps colonial art in general); a preoccupation, shared by artists and audience alike, with what kind of artist Australia needed. At the same time, I wanted to demonstrate that iconic art works weren’t […]
By 1997, I was well-and-truly entrenched in the work of Robert Smithson. This process had begun with my dissertation research; hence the ‘what did he know and when did he know it’ tone below. And it extended into a 1997 road trip to numerous earthworks sites in the American Southwest. (The ‘Spiral Jetty’ was under water […]
Having pursued the topic further since this article was first published in 1995, I’d modify some of my comments. The issue of what precisely was meant by ‘national’ in Arthur Streeton’s The national game is still to be resolved but there are strong leads. Contrary to what I state below, ‘national’ could mean ‘geographically expansive’; […]
The idea of a book on Australian suburbia came from Chris Healy. Supported by a small grant, we plowed ahead. At some stage, the idea of contributions on art came up. I mused about some works by Dale Hickey and Ian Burn that I’d seen. Why don’t you write about them?, my colleagues asked. Which […]