Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Un-titled: Elizabeth Newman at Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 20 November, 2021–23 January, 2022. The exhibition surveyed Newman’s body of work, ranging from collage, installation, text-based, textile or found object, and all infused with painterly notions of re-presentation. Hovering around the edges of signification, embracing affect and the act of becoming, her work pivots around reversals of positive and negative, challenging the limitations of language while paradoxically affirming the plasticity of our systems of understanding.

Essays by Tony Oates and Frances Plagne. Designed by Small Tasks.

Elizabeth Newman is best known as a visual artist whose practice encompasses a variety of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Writing, too, is central to her art. As indicated by the twenty-five or so texts compiled in this book, all dating from the last fifteen years, Newman’s literary output extends beyond her studio practice. Many of these texts are about artworks and exhibitions—her own as well as those of other local artists: they serve a critical rather than an aesthetic function. As such, these writings offer valuable insight into Newman’s artistic intentions and motivations, and her commentaries on the art of her peers constitute a compelling partial survey of art produced in Melbourne over the last decade and a half.

Edited by David Homewood and designed by Robert Milne.