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In This Issue

EDITOR’S NOTE

The portrait of Jordan Gogos on the cover of this issue of Artist Profile, accompanied by the phrase “out of the box,” aligns the artist and fashion designer for Iordanes Spyridon Gogos with ideas of experimentation, collaboration and disruption that challenge what is considered “conventional” in art and fashion. This attitude has driven both his innovation and critical perspective—qualities recognised by Lisa Havilah when Gogos was still in his early twenties.

What Havilah explains in her cover essay so well is Gogos’s relationship between art and fashion, particularly his exploration of the intimacy and tension between the two fields. She describes Gogos and his process as “electric” in the way he dissolves these separations: fashion becomes conceptual and political, while art becomes wearable, performative and socially circulated. Havilah cites Australian art and fashion pioneers David McDiarmid (1952–1995) and Peter Tully (1947–1992) as natural cultural touchstones for Gogos’s practice. She also highlights Gogos’s local collaborator, the exceptional Akira Isogawa.
 
Equally astonishing is the pace at which the Australian arts sector has acquired significant numbers of his work, from the National Gallery of Australia and the Powerhouse to the Museum of Old and New Art. Gogos’s first major institutional solo exhibition at Sydney’s UNSW Galleries is curated by José da Silva, arguably one of Australasia’s most exciting curators. Most senior artists dream of such acquisitional success, which makes it harder to believe Gogos is still in his twenties.
 
It was pleasing to see in early May, Khaled Sabsabi present two major works across the Venice Biennale. His immersive installation conference of one’s self, 2026, curated by Michael Dagostino and occupying the Australia Pavilion within the Giardini della Biennale, marks Australia’s national presentation. Simultaneously, Sabsabi’s multimedia work khalil, 2026, appears in the Biennale’s central exhibition, In Minor Keys, at the Arsenale. This dual presentation is historically significant, making Sabsabi the first Australian artist—and one of the few international artists—to exhibit simultaneously in both a national pavilion and the Biennale’s main curated exhibition during the same edition. Reviews of both presentations will appear in the August issue of Artist Profile.
 
To the many art-football nuts, Sebastian Goldspink’s essay honours Reko Rennie’s sacred design of the Australia’s men’s and women’s national football team jerseys ahead of the men’s FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States and the women’s tournament in Brazil in 2027. It is an amazing story packed with Rennie power—an energy that may just propel the Socceroos and the Matilda’s towards dream status: lifting both World Cups.
 
Helen Hughes writes a deeply moving tribute celebrating her friend, artist and psychoanalyst Elizabeth Newman’s quiet radicalism, influence, doubt and enduring artistic generosity—qualities that taught generations of artists that restraint could be powerful and that art’s failures are also its freedoms. Newman’s legacy will endure through the precision, humility and intellectual courage of her work.
 
These and many other essays in this issue of Artist Profile capture Australasian visual arts locally and internationally. Thank you for continuing to support Artist Profile.

 

Kon Gouriotis, Editor

Artist Profile acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which we work.

 

CONTENTS

ISSUE 

Issue: How the body forgets its recipe for skin by Nathan Shepherdson

COVER FEATURE

Jordan Gogos is Electric by Lisa Havilah

PROFILES

Milli Jannides: The Slipping Place by Elli Walsh
Ruth Waller: Painted Gardens and Deserts of Retreat by Justin Paton
The Glass Weaving of Jenni Kemarre Martiniello by Bronwyn Watson
The Conditions of Wonder in the Paintings of Angus Nivison by Rachael Parsons
Yvonne Boag: Carried Between Worlds by Jack Howard
Tony Slater: Twenty paintings for trying times by Rhonda Davis

INSIGHT

Poem: rules of refuse by Lou Garcia-Dolnik
Poster: AUSSIE by Peter Drew
Process: Measure twice, cut once by Alex White
Tribute: Elizabeth Newman (1962–2026) by Helen Hughes
Essay: Do artists dream of electric eels? by Loqui Paatsch
Essay: Paul Greenaway OAM: Spirit of Inquiry by Judith Blackall
Essay: Connecting Culture: Bark Masters by Louise Martin-Chew
Essay: A palimpsest effect by Emma-Kate Wilson
Essay: Total Football | Reko Rennie by Sebastian Goldspink
Essay: Lines that almost meet: On the work of Brett McMahon by Alexandra Pedley
Essay: Between Bodies by Bradley Vincent
Review: Are there limits to free speech? And some ruminations on Rememory: the 25th Biennale of Sydney by Brad Buckley
Review: Resistance and Aching Truths by Anne Loxley
Review: Coming together, coming apart: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art by Peter McKay
Review: From the Buses: 2026 Beechworth Biennale by John Kirkman
Review: Designed to Impress: Epic Times by Ian McLean
Review: Can Abstraction Speak? by Macushla Robinson
Review: The Interior World of John de Burgh Perceval by Amélie Blanc
Review: Michael Vale: Synchronicity and the theatre of the absurd by Sasha Grishin
Review: If You’re Going to Be a Smart-Arse, You Bloody Better Be Right by H.R. Hyatt-Johnston
Review: Enter the edge: Elvis Richardson’s suburbia by Brooke Boland
Review: Grounding Ambition at Newcastle by Alex Wisser
Film Review: Deus Ex Lanthimos? Confused or confusing interventions in the work of Yorgos Lanthimos by Aleks Wansbrough
Book Review: The Prize: All is Fair in Love and War by Lucy Stranger
Preview: Keeper of Country by Sarah Hetherington
Preview: Between Skyline and Stars: Shireen Taweel and Jasper Knight at Mosman Art Gallery by Solomiya Sywak
Discovery: An Appetite for All by Warwick Gow
Short story: Cause and Effect by Nola Farman

 

 

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