Join us to celebrate the book launch of Variations: A More Diverse Picture of Contemporary Art by Tristen Harwood, Grace McQuilten and Anthony White, published with Monash University Publishing. The event be launched by VC Indigenous Research Fellow Aunty Vicki Couzens, and will feature short readings from artists and writers featured in the book. This is an important new publication that positions social and cultural difference at the heart of contemporary art discourses.
Variation’ is a term that embraces difference and is core to the excitement and uniqueness of art practice. This book gives much-deserved attention to the work of artists with exceptional and varied lived experiences – including neurodiversity, diverse mental health, incarceration, and refugee, migrant and Muslim backgrounds – to transform how we understand contemporary visual art.
The book’s goal is recognising, appreciating and analysing artistic variation – a process in which artists’ voices are central to their stories, including how their lives and works are presented, discussed, framed and theorised. The essays, profiles and images in this hardback, lavishly illustrated volume have been co-produced, and in many cases co-authored, with artists and writers who have direct lived experience of social and cultural variation.
To understand art-making in Australia, it is essential to listen to the voices of artists who live complex forms of social diversity. Engagingly written and beautifully produced, this book introduces readers to a new picture of contemporary Australian art.

The book features co-authorship and contributions from Safdar Ahmed & Izabella Antoniou, Samantha Ashdown, Thelma Beeton, Michael Camakaris, Frances Castles, Dewi Cooke, Simon Crosbie, Joy Bulanjdjan Garlbin & Janet Kalidjan Marawarr, Charles Green, Jenny Hickinbotham, Christopher Hummell, Zeina Iaali,Javier Lara-Gomez, Anthony Mannix, Thomas ‘Marksey’ Marks, Brian McKinnon, Anna Parlane, Meagan Pelham, Hamed Rayat, Lisa Reid, Miream Salameh, Skye Saxon, Helen Sheferaw, Nur Shkembi, Patricia Stewart, Muhubo Sulieman, Tabz, Shireen Taweel, Wart and A Qasim Zada.

This event is supported by the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation (CAST) research group at RMIT University. If you have any accessibility requirements, please get in touch via email cast@rmit.edu.au.