Book launch | Art Mania by Kitty Hauser

You’re invited to a celebration of Art Mania, the first biography of Geoffrey Bardon, written by the acclaimed author and scholar Kitty Hauser.

An innovative biography based on unprecedented archival access, Art Mania: Geoffrey Bardon and the Painting Men of Papunya sheds new light on the pivotal story in Australian art history. It stands at the same time as an important account of an Australian life – a portrait of mental illness, and of the conflicted psychology of white Australia. Written as a dialogue between text and images, Kitty Hauser’s powerful work explores the limits of the biographical form.

Join us for drinks from 6.30pm to celebrate this landmark work on the evening of Friday 13 November. Copies of Art Mania will be available for purchase through the book’s publisher, Giramondo.

RSVP on this page to secure your entry.

We hope to see you there.

Praise for Art Mania:

‘This is a brilliant book.’
– Fred Myers, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, New York University and author of Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art

‘Geoffrey Bardon was a lightning rod for a forcefield of cultural expression and aspirations he had only the most vestigial understanding of. Hauser examines how this brush with a different cognitive realm both remade and undid him… Art Mania is an engrossing and sensitive appraisal of cross-cultural dissonance, and a welcome addition to the ripple effect of Bardon’s precipitate plunge into the Western Desert sensibility.’ 
– Kim Mahood

Giramondo Publishing | 30 Years in 2026