Zico Albaiquni’s Anthroporn

The last essay I contributed to Artlink examined recent curatorial efforts to insert Philippa Cullen (1950–1975) into the canon of Australian feminist performance art history. The revisionist energies amplifying the contributions of an emerging experimental artist of the early seventies, were institutionally performed via the National Gallery of Australia’s (NGA) Know My Name project. As important as the project has been in critically redressing gender imbalance and historical gaps in the NGA’s collection, it stirred great debate and highlighted the multitude of important female-identifying and non-binary artists, living and dead, who fail to cut through.

In August 2024 I joined Wollongong Art Gallery as its seventh director in its almost 50-year history. Immediately immersed in its large collection as a crash course in its cultural and sociopolitical contribution to Australian (largely regional) art history, I kept returning to the enigmatic work of a local and long-forgotten painter Joan Meats (1920–2003).

A lover whilst exiting my life, turned to say “l never really loved you. l loved your art.” It wasn’t the biggest burn. I consider myself the art anyway. It’s the best part of me. Really, actually, the only me. There is so little of me (‘my’ life). I have extra territory to make a variety of art personas.

- Diena Georgetti, in conversation with Melissa Loughlan 2025

Diena Georgetti’s recent paintings eschew anecdotal narrative, but nevertheless conjure a labyrinthine backstory that interweaves a complex stratum of influence, personal necessity and artistic identity. It would be more than glancingly accurate to see these works both as insights into the dichotomy between creative impulse and control, and as vehicles to some place of release or repose.

This article featuring selected paintings by the multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi was commissioned and drafted well-prior to the furore surrounding his celebrated appointment (with curator Michael Dagostino) to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The appointment was rescinded only six days later. As an art historian undertaking the unruly task of writing about contemporary art as a type of future history, I feel compelled to contextualise my original article, which I proposed as a reflection on Sabsabi’s more contemplative material practice.