Editor: Alasdair Foster is Professor of Culture in Community Wellbeing in the School of Public Health at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne.
Is compassion a cultural construct or the bedrock of our humanity, essential to our survival? This edition looks to the role of art and artmaking in engendering compassion through forms of creative social enterprise and self-reflection that engage the slower, deeper, more critically aware aspects of our perceptual experience. It draws on concepts of visibility, sharing, mutuality, collaboration, listening, recovery and redemption.
Cover and above: Belinda Mason/Blur Projects, detail from Whanau, Roberta, Maori – Aotearoa New Zealand, 2017, from the series Silent Tears, Duraclear laser print on acrylic sheet
