Quarterly essays
Quarterly essays are 5,000-word explorations of a particular time and place in the wide world, as told through a handmade object. They are journeys that reveal the ongoing work of culture-makers to give enduring meaning to our world.
Moffat Takadiwa: The art of small things - Jenan Taylor returns to her southern African roots, drawn by the mysterious smell of soap, to discover the place where Zimbabwe's iconic sculptor gathers his materials and community.
Dancing with the anvil - Michael Winkler is impressed by the resilience in the USA, emboded in those who continue to work with iron.
Of Time and the City - Kathryn Bird and Ross Gibson find in Kyoto and beauty borne of skill and care
Ngurra: Finding our way home - Glenn Iseger-Pilkington finds a sense of home with the Ngaanyatjarra community, grounded and connected through Country.
Remembering the string figures of Yirrkala - Robyn McKenzie discovers a mysterious trove of books about string figures. To understand their meaning today, she travels to Yirrkala and learns slowly how to create these figures for herself. But it is only by making them into a static art product, through printmaking, that she is able to engage the community. What unfolds is a revelation of thinking through string.
The world in a chai cup: Sandra Bowkett and a village of Indian potters - Andrew Stephens visits Sandra Bowkett's studio in the central Victorian town of Tallarook and learns about her life-long connection to an Indian potter's village within Delhi. Despite the economic and cultural gulf between the two places, he finds a compelling dialogue about the elemental forces of our world.
Objects for an Unknown Future Museum - Sally Simpson's Venerated Remains are powerful evocations of an ancient world, yet one that happens to be from a recent manmade lake returning to its natural state. Kim Mahood finds in Sally's work an important expression of the non-indigenous relation to land, which reflects both the desire for a foundational history and the settler sense of non-belonging.