After Dutch expeditions reached New Guinea's Lake Sentani island and Humboldt Bay in the mid-1800s, Western visitors began collecting works by local artists. Ancestors of the Lake is a stunning look at the region's distinctive art, such as its highly stylized wooden sculptures and decoratively and abstractly designed barkcloths. This beautifully illustrated volume brings together many of these important historic pieces for the first time, including the landmark collection of French writer and art dealer Jacques Viot, along with photographs by Paul Wirz. The book also explores how...

New technologies continually arise, offering repeated opportunities to artists in search of the technologically novel. Stephen Jones calls this phenomenon the "rolling new," and in Synthetics he describes how artists in Australia used new technologies in their art, from the early days of digital computing in the 1950s to a landmark exhibition in 1975. Jones looks at not only the artists and the artworks they produced but also at the evolution of computing technologies and video displays as these new forms of media developed into tools that artists could use. He also examines the...

Aboriginal acrylic painting, produced by indigenous women artists of the Australian Desert, bears a superficial resemblance to abstract expressionism and is often read as such by viewers. Yet to see this art only through a Western...

Australia s Impressionists focuses on the paintings of Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, and John Peter Russell. All were key players in a distinctively Australian art movement that drew on influences ranging from Whistler s subtle Nocturnes to the European tradition of plein air painting, and revealed Russell (who spent his working life in France, embedded in the avant garde) as one of the outstanding colorists of his time. This beautiful book challenges our preconceptions of what is meant by Impressionism, enriches our understanding of Australian art, and...