Habitual browsers of a leading internet art site, accustomed to an absence of Australian content, would have been startled in February of this year, to observe a prominent reference to Australian art at Madrid's ARCO. For Paul Greenaway, Director of Greenaway Art Gallery in Adelaide, and motivated by a desire to redress the lack of international awareness of contemporary Australian art, it marked the culmination of seven years of lobbying to have Australia designated the focus nation at the Spanish contemporary art fair.
Introducting the final episode of 'This is Modern Art', his six-part television series which screened in Australia in 2000, Matthew Collings seemed ridden with apocalyptic feelings about the whole thing wrapping up. For five weeks he had come into our homes at night like kind of groovy art dad to deliver his version of the story of art from Picasso to the young British artists.
Autobiographical book by Noel Sheridan with contributions from Donald Brook, George Alexander and others Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2001, 212pp, colour