I have uploaded a set of pages honouring Leo Haks, a collector and researcher of Indonesian photography. It was his collection that the National Gallery of Australia purchased as the basis for new collections and subsequently the exhibition: Garden of the East. Click here for the link to the Leo Haks pages.
I have uploaded a 2025 online presentation of the catalogue for the 2008 exhibition, Pacific Paradise, at the National Gallery of Australia. It was fun to revisit these images and to think on those times spent bringing these collections together. Click here.
I have revised and added to an essay that was previously published in 2022 on Indonesian photography. In revisiting this work I was reminded of Leo Haks, the wonderful collector who we now miss and who was so much at the centre of how this collection came together. I hope to honour him soon with an essay and special online page or two.
My essay on Indonesian photography is online — click here.
On a very typical Melbourne day of varying weather, we took ourselves for a slightly early birthday lunch at the Boathouse Restaurant in Fairfield — on the Yarra Bend.
This piece was a difficult piece to write. The requirement was to survey 19th century photography across the Pacific in a few hundred words. Many hours were spent reducing the entry and making decisions on what to leave out — reluctantly! If I ever find the time I may revisit this and make it a much longer piece with all the extras inserted back in. Wishful thinking maybe? Here’s the original piece.
I have uploaded a piece on the iconic George Silk 1942 photograph of the Papuan carrier Raphael Oimbari assisting Private George Whittington. I have also included research “After The Photograph” using a selection of memorial sculptures that have been influenced by the Silk photograph. Click here for the online essays.
Photography collections can be fun! I love good ‘table top’ works and we have a number in our collection. This is one — and I have written a small piece about it — click here
Merry Christmas from Melbourne, our new home city.
Following our decision to move to Melbourne, we have packed up and cleaned out — and now have our home up for auction — this Saturday 4th November.
Click here for more on this.
We have been extra busy! A couple of months ago the decision was made to move to Melbourne this year. Maybe this was far too optimistic — but we are going for it!
Enjoying a morning cuppa in a quiet place in our garden — wearing suffragette colours to celebrate International Women’s Day and the legion of awesome women photographers past and present I have encountered in my curatorial career.
The theme this year is #EmbraceEquity. There are so many gains but still so stubborn a gap in equity, is it time for militancy???
Here’s to all of you — enjoy the day wherever you are…
I have unearthed an essay from 1976 which was a commentary about photo-history books available at the time.
Over the recent years I have been searching through my archives for articles and essays that we have since published on our web-site. I had overlooked one exhibition. That was the 1981 Project Gallery exhibition Re-constructed Vision: Contemporary work with photography at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
It is now uploaded to our web site.
Have uploaded a page about my collection of photographer’s greeting cards that has been placed with the AGNSW Library — click here
Updated November 2021
Have uploaded more to Parting with Your Art — click here.
This new page is an update on my most recent experiences on parting with my own archive as well as some thoughts that may be useful to others dealing with these downsizing matters
For the full list of pages so far: Click here
Have uploaded to our photo-web site a special section on the first photography curators — Australian that is. We have listed four: Jennie Boddington, Ian North, Gael Newton (me!), and Alan Davies. The listings for Jennie and myself include 1983 interviews by the Australian Centre of Photography. These are very long! (you have been warned)
If you know of any other useful online material on these people, please make contact.
I was approached by Penny Grist of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to advise on the 2017 exhibition — Starstruck. I then had the great experience of working with the co-curators Penny from the Portrait Gallery and Jenny Coombes of National Film and Sound Archive. This was a fun collaborative research experience — with my essay published in their book for the exhibition. Click here for the essay now online.
The wonders of looking through your own archive. I realised I had not uploaded an essay from 2006 on Michael Riley. Have now — so here’s the link — click here.
Updated June 2021 Have uploaded more to Parting with Your Art — click here.
This page is about managing expectations, large collections, institutional collection policies, points for collectors approaching art museums and archives, recommended first steps — and more..
For the full list of pages so far: Click here
As I said in a previous post — I have been uploading my writings to my essay pages.
There is now an updated portal page for John Kauffmann — click here; that includes a link to my 1996 essay for the exhibition John Kauffmann Art Photographer
I have been uploading more of my writings to my essay pages.
Today I have uploaded a 1980 essay on John Kauffmann. Click here for this essay
Updated April 2021
topics: Downsizing Collections; More on Capital Gains Tax; Finding new homes for my library. Have uploaded these new pages to Parting with Your Art — click here.
Updated 12 August 2020
Have uploaded new pages on Parting with Your Art — click here.
Will be writing up some experiences and thoughts about parting with your art. This will be based on my own experiences as well as many stories heard in recent years.
I have uploaded a small essay I wrote in 2014 about Walter Woodbury in Indonesia. This essay was linked to the exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia — Garden of the East: photography in Indonesia 1850s-1940s. Click here for my essay online.
There’s also another small essay online that relates to a photograph — the one above — titled Serimpies, or dancing girls of the Sultano c.1858 . Click here for that essay.
For the list of my essays (being updated) click here
————————
An update August 2025: Have uploaded an online version of Garden of the East
I have several essays online about Tracey Moffatt and her photography. There’s also a link to an online version of the 1995 publication Fever Pitch with essays by Tracey and myself.
Tracey Moffatt: Invocations (2001)
Published in the exhibition catalogue — Australian National University Gallery 2001
Tracey Moffatt: The memory theatre of Tracey Moffatt
An exhibition held at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2 February — 9 April 2000
Tracey Moffatt: See the woman with the red dress on … and on … and on
Essay in Art and Asia Pacific 1994
Published online the now out of print publication (1995) with key essay by Gael Newton on Tracey Moffatt’s work along with two essays by Tracey Moffatt.
Fever Pitch was originally published in 1995 by Piper Press, Annadale (Sydney).
For more of Gael Newton’s papers — click here.
————————
For the list of my essays (being updated) click here
Michael Riley’s Cloud (2000)
This essay was originally published in the catalogue Photographica Australis
for the 2002 exhibition by the Australian Centre of Photography
Curated by Alasdair Foster. Click here
————————
For the list of my essays (being updated) click here
I have uploaded an online version of the catalogue for the 1982 retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW — Axel Poignant, photographs 1922–1980. Click here.
————————
For the list of my essays (being updated) click here
Exhibition at GAGProjects (Adelaide) till 18 November 2018.
Click here for my essay and links to the exhibition page.
https://www.facebook.com/gael.newton/posts/10156457600544551
An exhibition notice for an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Click here for the link…
And for more on Harold Edgerton — see my 1999 paper for the catalogue at the National Gallery of Australia — click here.
Click on the image for more on this exhibition
We have uploaded a new page on photo-web that provides a link to my essays on Max Dupain as well as links to other articles and resources. Click here.
https://www.facebook.com/theARTMUSEum.PaulCostigan/posts/561296737535490
originally published earlier this year as a contribution to the research ‘Heritage in the Limelight: the magic lantern in Australia and the world’. click here for my paper
another cool day in Canberra
Time out on a freezing cold morning in Canberra
click here for the TAP site — or here for the Spring 2017 details — that includes a link to a review by me.
Curtain Call at Stills Gallery Sydney
Here at photographs of the opening of the final Stills Gallery exhibition — Curtin Call
INFORMATION CALL-OUT: FRANK HURLEYSearching for Frank Hurley along our northern beaches
Did you know that Frank Hurley was a very keen gardener and photographer of wild flowers?
A new research book has been published by the National Gallery of Singapore. It contains essays on Southeast Asian art by 25 scholars.
I was given the honour by the NGS of being one the contributing scholars.
The book is available from the NGS shop and through their website — click here.
click on the banner above for a link to information on Harold Cazneaux and lists of rare photographs now for sale.
till 29 Jan 2017 — Photographers Gallery London — click on image above
click on image for information on this small exhibition
click on the image for the link to the Bruce Museum
Click on image above for link to exhibition notice on Artdaily.
Click on the image for the winners of the competition, CCP Salon.
Click here for the article on artdaily.
From the gallery: This exhibition offered a glimpse of the lost architecture of preindustrial London, as captured in a series of carbon photoprints commissioned between 1875 and 1886 by the short-lived Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London.
The View from Here, brings together 70 key works that chart the history of landscape photography over the course of 175 years. click here for more.
Exhibition runs 29th October 2016 − 30th April 2017 — click here for the gallery site
The MAST Foundation in Bologna is presenting for the first time in Italy a major solo exhibition of contemporary photographs by Dayanita Singh.
click on the image for the story from The Art Newspaper
Image linked from a site by Amy Dickinson — click here
Click on the image for the review by Lenny Ann Low in the Fairfax news.
click here — for a story on the presence of females amongst the abstract expressionists.
click on the image for the link to the exhibition and
