In 1989 photographer Anne Zahalka recreated a well-known painting of stylised, muscular white Australians frolicking on the beach, into a multi-ethnic tableau of an Australia that was more recognisable to her. Deconstructing the identity of the characters in famous Australian artworks is just one strand of her four-decade career. Anne talks to Rosa about using old-school museum dioramas to imagine climate crisis scenarios, and her immigrant Jewish mother’s story of survival.
My Thing is…the community reading room. Fijian-Australian artist Torika Bolatagici started her own reading room, an archive of books and ephemera about the creative practices of First Nations, Black and global Indigenous artists of colour, which people can use for free.
Needlepoint artist Jessie Deane stitches intricate scenes of Melbourne’s western suburbs. She’s loving the Big Build, an infrastructure project which is causing a headache for train commuters, but is a thrill for an artist who specialises in industrial landscapes. Jessie shares an artistic bond with her great aunt, the British textile artist Evelyn Wyld.