The passionate story of a young painter, Clarice Beckett, who defies society's strict conventions and indifferent art critics alike and leads an intense private and professional life.

This book accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Art Gallery of South Australia, August 15-October 19, 2008.

Spirits in the Bush surveys the art of Gippsland, from the colonial to the contemporary. This expansive, original and illuminating compendium leads readers on a journey through artistic and provincial history, interweaving the lives of residents and visitors. Collectively, it presents a vivid account of the influence of place on the cultural imagination. A fascinating cast of characters includes some of Australia’s best-known and most-loved artists, including Eugène von Guérard, Jessie Traill, Arthur Streeton, Clarice Beckett, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams, and Jeffrey Smart. Readers will discover also a host of new names destined for recognition. Spirits in the Bush reveals how artists have grappled with a region that is in equal measures beautiful and brutal, and which has provided the stage for many of the key battles in Australian art history. Bound by geographical camaraderie, and with the spectre of Gippsland’s past as an unwavering presence, the stories of their art unfold in a unique dialogue. This publication was made possible through the generous support of the Gordon Darling Foundation.

'Painting matters to Australia and Australians as it does in few other countries. It has formed our consciousness, our sense of where we come from, and who we are. It cries out for wider recognition and acknowledgement.' - Patrick McCaughey Why has Australia, an island continent with a small population, produced such original and powerful art? And why is it so little known beyond our shores? Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters is Patrick McCaughey's answer.

Lispector’s most shocking novel. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector’s mystical novel of 1964, concerns a well-to-do Rio sculptress, G.H., who enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door—crushing the cockroach—and then watches it die. At the end of the novel, at the height of a spiritual crisis, comes the most famous and most genuinely shocking scene in Brazilian literature… Lispector wrote that of all her works this novel was the one that “best corresponded to her demands as a writer.”