Deceptively simple, Valamanesh's work is often made with elemental substances, natural materials found objects - for example Persian Carpets, an old photo of his grandmother or a pair of worn shoes resonating with cultural and personal associations.

"The work features over 280 works by more than 170 Australian artists drawn from a period of acquisitions which began with the consitution of the MCA in May 1989."--p. 17.

Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument explores the history of the 1840s Irish Famine in visual representation, commemoration and collective memory from the 19th century until the present, across Ireland and the nations of its diaspora, explaining why since the 1990s the Famine past has come to matter so much in our present.

Angela Valamanesh is one of Australia's most intriguing ceramic artists. Her art is aesthetically minimal and cunningly simple, allowing us to interpret universal and ever-perplexing human, animal and organic forms. Valamanesh re-immerses us in the primeval rawness of form and function and, in doing so, the artist succeeds in visualising what many of her contemporaries have avoided - the symbiosis between art and science.

Rapid change in trade, demographics, culture and environment around the Indian Ocean demands a revaluation of how communities, sustainability and security are constituted in this globally strategically important region. Indian Ocean Futures: Communities, Sustainability and Security raises awareness of threats and opportunities beyond popular notions of communities through an examination of issues of concern to local, national, regional and transnational communities around the Indian Ocean Rim. This edited book is organized into three broad areas: the heritage and identity of communities, their sustainability and their security. The first section examines how heritage and identity are negotiated in establishing the basis of communities and public discussion of their futures. The second part explores different practices, technologies and communities of sustainability; from technologies being developed for sustainable coastal regions to the adoption of traditional practices for food management. The final section canvasses the changing landscapes and seascapes of the Indian Ocean in relation to the broad concerns of food, environmental and political security. As such, this volume offers the reader valuable engagement with the complex relations of communities and environments and key discourses shaping understandings of the future of the Indian Ocean region.

Explores the intrinsic relation of life to air, and breathing, through contemporary art In Out of Breath, Caterina Albano examines the cultural significance of breath and air to a wide array of forces in our midst, including economy, politics, infection, and ecological violence. Through a consideration of recent art practices and projects, including the dance project Breath Catalogue, which makes visible the breathing patterns of dancers, and Forensic Architecture’s Cloud Studies video, which investigates eight different kinds of clouds from airstrikes to herbicides to tear gas, Albano focuses on breath as both an intuitive process and a conveyer of meanings. Conceived in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and systemic inequalities that it has laid bare, Out of Breath shows the potential of artistic practices to mobilize affect as a form of cultural and political critique. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.