Last Friday saw the conclusion of a successful and rewarding Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference at the RMIT University School of Art in Melbourne. The Association would like to thank the RMIT Conference Co-convenors Marnie Badham and Daniel Palmer; Grace McQuilten; and Amy Spiers, the Conference Producer, for producing such an excellent and stimulating event. Gratitude is also due to the entire Conference Committee, and the many Conference Volunteers who worked tirelessly to ensure the smooth running of the event. The sheer number of speakers and delegates (the highest for any conference in the Association’s history), the diversity of the topics discussed, and the innovative artistic program which accompanied the conference, are aspects of the RMIT gathering that will remain in memory for years to come. Members and subscribers can look forward to the next conference which will be hosted in New Zealand during December 2019 by a team based at the University of Auckland.
In other news emerging from the Conference, the Association is delighted to announce the election of a new President of the AAANZ. From early 2019 Wendy Garden, of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in Darwin, will be the next Association President. Congratulations to Wendy on her election success.
Several publication prizes were awarded at the 2018 Conference by the outgoing President of the Association, Anthony White. A full citation for the winners, who are listed here, will be posted in the coming days. The Association congratulates all the prize-winners and offers heartfelt thanks to all the prize judges who were faced with the difficult task of selecting the winners from a very competitive field of nominations.
The 2018 Conference closing ceremony saw the launch of the latest issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, an open issue ably edited by Ann Elias and Stephen Whiteman, and the last from the Sydney-based editorial team. The launch also marked the formal handover of the Journal from the Power Institute in Sydney to the Centre for Visual Arts in Melbourne. As we mark the transition from one editorial team to another it is timely to recognise and celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of the Sydney editors. ANZJA 18.2 can be viewed here.
The Sydney-based Editorial Committee, the special issue Editors and the Power Institute staff have made an enormous contribution to the Journal. Looking back over the past 5 years it is clear that the Editor in Chief, Mark Ledbury; the Editorial Board, Donna West Brett, Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Keith Broadfoot, Georgina Cole, Ann Elias, Jacqueline Millner, Rachel Kent and Stephen H Whiteman; the special issue Editors Roger Benjamin, Catriona Moore, Olivier Krischer and Andrew Yip; and the supporting staff at the Power Institute including Marni Williams, Toby Fitch and Mimi Kelly, have transformed this publication into the wildly successful Journal that it is today. On every measure, whether in diversity of subjects, excellence of content, or increased readership, the Journal is now much stronger, far more rigorous and certainly more relevant that it has ever been.
Special praise is due not only to Mark Ledbury for leading such an amazing period of editorship but also to Donna West Brett, who worked as Reviews Editor across ten issues and co-editor on four Open issues, and who was integral to the Journal’s success. Of note also is the extraordinary contribution of the Editorial Coordinator, Marni Williams. As Stephen Whiteman, a long-standing member of the Editorial Board, recently wrote regarding Marni’s contribution:
I think I can say without fear of contradiction that no one deserves more credit for the overall quality and rigor of the Journal — from writing to review to production — than Marni Williams. Marni edited every piece line by line, word by word, carefully clarifying, elucidating, and extracting the meaning hidden in our often messy prose. She managed peer review, broadening the circle of scholars upon whom we called and ensuring that we were inviting input from many of the field’s leading researchers… Whatever we, collectively, accomplished during our period with the Journal, it is not just that we couldn’t have done it without Marni — Marni was central to conceiving, articulating, and implementing our vision.
Other individuals who should also be singled out for praise include Toby Fitch, Assistant Editor at Power Publications, who managed editing and production of the Journal this year, and Alexandra Lazzari and Nigel King at Taylor & Francis for all their support over several years.
Finally, the outgoing President, Anthony White, would like to thank the departing members of the Executive Committee Robert Wellington, Lisa Mansfield and Grace McQuilten, as well as the outgoing Business Manager Giles Fielke, for many years of dedicated service; and to wish all members and subscribers the very best for the holiday season and a hugely successful year in 2019.