By Kip Williams An edited transcript of a speech given by Kip Williams at the launch of Hannah Fink’s book Brownyn Oliver: Strange Things, published by Piper Press, at Carthona, the house of Roslyn and Tony Oxley, on 14 October 2017. .................................................................................... It is my pleasure to be here today to talk about Bronwyn’s incredible body of work and her remarkable life, a life that Hannah has captured so beautifully in this book. As Hannah conveys, it is hard to separate the life and work of Bronwyn from one another, so deeply interlinked they are. It is one of Bronwyn’s...

Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, officially launched Sirius to a record crowd of supporters.  The event was generously supported by Kinokuniya, with Managing Director Kawai-san welcoming guest to the store.    Guest included: Jack & Judy Mundey, to whom the book is dedicated.  Myra Demetriou, Sirius resident  Tao Gofers, Architect of Sirius  Alex Greenwich, Member for Sydney Penny Sharpe, Shadow Minister for Heritage Jess Scully, City of Sydney Councillor  Phillip Thalis, Architect, City of Sydney Councillor  Save Our Sirius members including chairperson Shaun Carter.  See more photos of the launch here. Save Our Sirius would like to thank everyone who made the...

I wish I could say that my origins as a non-fiction writer lay in a childhood devoted to telling only the truth. However, my earlier self is remembered more for making things up, doodling, for an imaginative excess. I fell into non-fiction, headlong and unintentionally—and this, briefly, is how it happened. I began as a poet and book-illustrator. Among my first published illustrations, mid-1980s, was a suite of charcoal drawings to accompany an excerpt from a soon-to-published book called BEING PAKEHA, written by Michael King, with whom I discussed the assignment in the offices of New Outlook magazine, Auckland. 

Half the Sky is the first major book on contemporary art in China by women. Author Luise Guest (Director of Education and Research at White Rabbit Gallery, home of one of the world’s great collections of contemporary Chinese art) believes ‘contemporary art in China is unlike anything in the rest of the world.’ 

Last night Judith Neilson, Founder of the White Rabbit Gallery, introduced Luise Guest’s HALF THE SKY to many of Luise’s family, friends and colleagues.HALF THE SKY is being launched to the public at Kinokuniya Sydney. See here for details.

The exhibition Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time was seen by 250,000 people in Venice. It returns to Australia to open at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in April 2016, and in Sydney in August.

Gregory O’Brien has been announced as the winner of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction in New Zealand. His recent writing includes Euan Macleod: The Painter in the Painting (Euan Macleod is a New Zealand born artist based in Sydney), and he was a central character in Kermadec: Nine Artists Explore the South Pacific where he acted as a co-ordinator, artist, editor and writer for an amazing artists’ journey and accompanying book about a remote and rarely visited region at the heart of one of the world’s great ocean wilderness areas. The vast Kermadec region, between New Zealand...

Congratulations to Del Kathryn Barton on winning the 2013 Archibald Prize, which was announced by the Art Gallery of New South Wales like this...

Around 1840 this child’s shoe was concealed in our house following the death of three children. Placed there by someone who believed it would protect the family, it remained in place for 170 years until discovered by Nick White who retains it as a keepsake that connects him with the house. Below Nick is photographed in the attic with the shoe for a Herald article.

The remote Kermadec Islands lie in the heart of one of the world’s great ocean wilderness areas. The 620,000-square kilometre Kermadec region, located between New Zealand and Tonga, is home to whales and turtles, sharks, seabirds, fish, and deep-sea marine life. It also contains underwater volcanoes and a deep-sea trench, making the islands a hotspot for some of the most geologically active and biologically unusual features on the planet. With so many environmental riches, the Kermadecs are an area worthy of our protective stewardship. In May 2011, the Pew Environment Group’s Global Ocean Legacy campaign organized an artists’ voyage to...