Claiming Ground
Claiming Ground:
twenty-five years of Tasmania’s Art for Public Buildings Scheme
Published by Quintus Publishing
ISBN 1 176832 35 5
“Tasmanians can be proud of the Art for Public Buildings Scheme. It began in 1979 and was the first scheme of its kind in Australia.”
So wrote the Hon Lara Giddings MHA, Minister for the Arts, in her Foreword to this softcover book, which is the result of a great deal of collaboration among a great many people.
Artists and designers for one. The scheme has now commissioned more than 800 artworks — with 80 of them chronicled in this book published in 2005, a rollcall of who’s doing interesting work in Tasmania and where to see the pieces themselves.
Continued …
Carnivorous Nights
Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger
By Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson
With artwork by Alexis Rockman
Published by The Text Publishing Company
ISBN 1 920885 94 3
Here is an entertaining and yet serious romp through Tasmania by two New York-based wildlife writers looking for the ever-elusive thylacine. They tell how they became “infatuated” in the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan with a taxiderm of a Tasmanian tiger — “positioned in such a lifelike manner, its mouth curved in a friendly canine smile, that we found ourselves feeling affection for it as if it were a long-lost pet.”
With friend and artist Alexis Rockman, Mittelbach and Crewdson came Down Under to see a live tiger for themselves.
Alas, the tiger remained ‘long-lost’ for them. But sightings and theories persist, as the writers record.
Continued …
The Founding of Hobart
The Founding of Hobart 1803-1804
By Frank Bolt
Published by Peregrine
ISBN 0 975 71660 3
If, like me, you were informed, sometimes entertained and occasionally surprised by Frank Bolt’s diary of the foundation of Hobart which appeared in The Mercury from September 2003 to August 2004, you probably wish you were one of those assiduous souls with an old-fashioned scrapbook habit.
I did indeed clip a few of the earlier entries, but when I came across them during a library clean-up they were dog-eared and already yellowing; newsprint ages just as quickly as it ever did.
But all that diligent work with scissors and Clag (remember Clag?) wasn’t necessary: Frank Bolt has now gathered the entire series into a substantial book.
Continued …
Page 1 of 1 pages
