Catalogue
Book Details

Jon Cattapan

Possible Histories

Chris McAuliffe

Jon Cattapan: Possible Histories will trace Cattapan's art from his student days to the present.

Opinion

'A major achievement of McAuliffe's monograph is that he has been able to present Cattapan's complex and diverse oeuvre with clarity and lucidity and make a statement concerning its significance without plunging into promotional purple prose which mars so much monographic writing
on Australian art.'
Sasha Grishin, The Canberra Times 1/11/08

". . .Throughout this beautifully illustrated book the artist does
appear as a hero and as an articulate spokesman in the narrative. To some
extent we have the Jon Cattapan story through the eyes and voice of Jon
Cattapan, with frequent use of interviews'.

About this Title

Jon Cattapan: Possible Histories traces Cattapan's art from his student days to the present. Beginning with the Dadaist grotesquerie and surrealist erotica of Melbourne's 1970s punk scene, it traces Cattapan's themes of isolation and longing into later explorations of postmodern cities and global information flows.

Emerging from the author's twenty-year friendship with the artist, this book includes extensive interviews and personal commentaries from the artist, along with numerous illustrations of his source materials and working processes. Cattapan makes painting a way of thinking, processing and reinvesting ethical positions into art.

Cattapan's work takes us into disputed territories where national character is debated in areas such as border control, ethnicity and community. Fluid forms and oozing pools of colour capture the transition from the 'hard' economy of industrial modernity to the 'liquid' state of an information society.

About the Author

Dr Chris McAuliffe is Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and of Harvard University, Dr McAuliffe has researched and written extensively on contemporary Australian art. His publications include Art and Suburbia (1996), Treasures: Highlights of the Cultural Collections of the University of Melbourne (2003) and Linda Marrinon: Let Her Try (2007). A well-known media commentator on the arts, Dr McAuliffe is a regular presenter on ABC TV's Sunday Arts.

978-0-522-85498-5