Still Life: Contemporary Australian Painters

Still Life presents forty contemporary Australian artists with their styles, subjects, visions and philosophies.

'A collection of objects, no matter how mundane, tells a story. They are like a little world; you can get lost in them.' - John Bokor

The book explores the diverse practices of more than forty contemporary Australian artists and documents a repertoire of styles, subjects, visions and philosophies. Alongside flowers and food - mainstays of the genre - the works within these pages also incorporate objects such as books and beer cans, birds and balloons, adding energy and intrigue to both the composition and the story revealed. This book captures the inanimate beauty of the everyday in a distinctly Australian context, and offers a meditation on human experience and the brevity of life.

Cressida Campbell is quoted: "I have always been interested in recording or interpreting my surroundings in a visual way. I almost feel I haven't properly experienced looking at something if I haven't observed in and tried to create either a picture from the subject or responded to it." 

Alongside flowers and food – mainstays of the genre – the works within these pages also incorporate objects such as books and beer cans, birds and balloons, adding energy and intrigue to both the composition and the story revealed. This book captures the inanimate beauty of the everyday in a distinctly Australian context, and offers a meditation on human experience and the brevity of life.

Amber Creswell Bell is a Sydney-based arts, design and lifestyle writer, and curator. With a passion for art, Amber champions emerging and unrepresented artists, curating popular exhibitions both independently and in collaboration with well-established commercial galleries. Her first book, Clay (2016), published by Thames & Hudson, showcases contemporary ceramic artisans from Australia and abroad. Her second book, A Painted Landscape (2018), profiles the diverse work of fifty of Australia's landscape painters.