May 2008
Art and Australia celebrates its 45th year with a gorgeous edition featuring a unique fold-out cover created by one of the world's pre-eminent artists, William Kentridge. Kentridge has created a dozen artworks especially for the magazine, complemented by an essay on the artist's practice by world authority Jane Taylor. Based in Johannesburg, William Kentridge is acclaimed for provocative works in which humanity and horror interplay.
The Kentridge cover continues Art & Australia's commitment to commissioning cutting-edge artists. Previous projects have involved this year's Archibald Prize winner Del Kathryn Barton, Melbourne-based artist Louise Weaver, and Australia's 2007 Venice Biennale representative Susan Norrie. Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Eleonora Triguboff approaches the creation of each issue of the magazine as if it were a sculpture. Each edition is viewed as a 'living project' that doesn't just report on works of art but is a venue for art exhibitions to appear.
'Art & Australia draws inspiration from such seminal journals as DOCUMENTS and Verve which commissioned artists like Picasso, Miró and Matisse to create work within their pages', says Managing Editor, Michael Fitzgerald. 'Since 1963 Art & Australia has been not just a magazine of record, but a site of ongoing artistic collaboration with the most dynamic practitioners from Australia and the world.'
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in 1955 where he continues to live and work today. He studied politics and African studies at University of Witwatersrand and theatre in Paris. Upcoming projects include a retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2009, and a production of Shostakovich's opera The Nose, set to premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 2010. Kentridge was also the subject of a 2004 survey show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is the Artistic Director of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. She has been Chief Curator of Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin, Italy, since 2002 and was co-curator of the 2005 Turin Triennale. She is interested in the relations between the historical avant-garde and contemporary art through exhibition-making.
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