Cirrus@Austlit

'Brisbane in the 1980s provides a case study of how a small, but intensely self-conscious experimental art-scene could be created by a very few people marginalised within a conservative culture. This was a uniquely Australian phenomenon, possible only in a country of densely-populated, capital cities, isolated from each other by great distances.

Within the period specified there existed a radical network of artists and writers, performers and musicians. Working in collaboration, they produced a rapidly-changing series of art-exhibitions and performances at artist-run spaces such as One Flat, Red Comb House, the Institute of Modern Art, John Mills National, A Room, Belltower, the Observatory and THAT Space. The same participants revived the artists' union in 1984, renamed the Queensland Artworkers' Alliance, and founded the national art-magazine eyeline in 1987.' (Introduction)