'We begin with an acknowledgement of Professor Lyndall Ryan, who transformed our understanding of colonial violence and its ongoing repercussions. She will be greatly missed by the Australian Studies community among the many others she influenced so powerfully. Her commitment to truth-telling in Australia is an ongoing legacy that motivates many of us. We would also like to announce and celebrate the winners of the Barrett Award, Cam Coventry (Postgraduate Category) and Jordana Silverstein (Open Category), with the Highly Commended award going to the joint-authored paper by Danielle Carney Flakelar and Emily O’Gorman.' (Editorial introduction)
The Recent Australian Painting show that opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in June 1961 is an important and much-discussed moment in Australian art history. It is the exhibition Australian art historian Bernard Smith wished he’d been able to write the catalogue for—he had earlier curated The Antipodeans in Melbourne in 1959, which he regarded as something of an inspiration for it, and helped its curator, Bryan Robertson, in 1960 when he was in Australia. Smith responded to the exhibition by delivering the famous polemic “The Myth of Isolation” as the inaugural Macrossan Lecture at the University of Queensland, which correctly diagnosed the hidden desire of English curators and art historians to understand Australian art as something exotic coming from far away with little connection to recent developments in European art. For Robertson, one of the chief English architects of this myth, Australia had a “lack of any aesthetic tradition with roots”, and in the catalogue he opined that it is “the very real isolation of many Australians [that] gives a special edge to whatever is created [there]”. Indeed, for the exhibition opening, he dressed the Whitechapel full of tropical plants and trees, a staging intended to evoke this fantasy. The other catalogue writers, Kenneth Clark and Robert Hughes, largely echoed Robertson, with Hughes, for example, speaking of “our complete isolation from the Renaissance tradition, and, parallel with that, a similar isolation from most of what happens now in world art” (Introduction)
'This article reconsiders A. D. Hope’s cutting appraisal of the group of young poets and artists from the University of Adelaide who have come to be known colloquially as “the Angry Penguins”. Setting aside the influence of the Ern Malley affair on the Penguins’ perceived importance, the article proposes that Hope has contributed fundamental misrepresentations about the identities of the Penguins cohort and their aspirations for Australian literary identity. Contrary to Hope’s opinion, the Angry Penguins—at least in the initial phase of their development—were not purveyors of an impenetrable brand of Australian surrealism, but were, rather, a group of diverse young poets advocating for the internationalisation of Australian cultural identity.' (Publication abstract)
'Dominant narratives of the Australian New Wave tend to frame the efflorescence of national filmmaking in the 1970s through the lens of Gough Whitlam’s brand of cultural nationalism. The narrative usually runs as follows: state-funded films tended to favour a conservative, genteel and respectable aesthetic that came to be known as the “Australian Film Commission genre”. This article uses Mark Fisher’s concept of “popular modernism” to challenge this dominant account of the Australian New Wave first put forth by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, outlining the ways in which social democracy and state funding provided the conditions that allowed filmmakers to produce radical films that were anti-nationalist in character. As we will argue, when national film production deviated from this configuration and became circumscribed by neoliberal restructuring and economic rationalism in the 1980s, the New Wave took on an increasingly nationalist impulse. The article will trace this trajectory through a narrative analysis of two films from lauded Australian director Peter Weir: The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and Gallipoli (1981).' (Introduction)
'This article explores Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri artist Leah Purcell’s recent multigenre project, “The Legend of Molly Johnson”. Beginning as an adaptation of Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife”, the project fundamentally defamiliarises and subverts Lawson’s story from the standpoint of an Aboriginal woman. Evolving across different genres—from play to novel and film—Purcell’s project is a unique case of adaptation, identity-making and transmedia world-building. This article considers Purcell’s adaptations as a form of franchise storytelling, and central to her cultural and political interventions is the figure of Molly Johnson. As an iconic Aboriginal heroine, Molly is empowered by her deep connection with Country and her role as a mother. Central to the narrative is the theme of maternalism, which allows Purcell to weave her personal experiences and family history into the character of Molly, who encapsulates the strength and resilience of generations of Aboriginal women. Purcell’s “Drover’s Wife” project also mounts an intersectional critique of mainstream White feminism through the juxtaposition of Molly and Louisa Clintoff, a character introduced in the novel and film versions.' (Publication abstract)
