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Hannah Fink Hannah Fink i(12538386 works by)
Gender: Female
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1 2 y separately published work icon Daniel Thomas Recent Past : Writing Australian Art Daniel Thomas , Hannah Fink (editor), Steven Miller (editor), Sydney : Art Gallery of New South Wales , 2020 20874058 2020 selected work essay … over the course of half a century, Daniel has asked and answered the questions that no one else has thought of. Originality, curiosity, generosity and intellectual precision have always been at the heart of his work. Andrew Sayers, former director of the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

'No one knows more about Australian art than Daniel Thomas. Over the past sixty years, he has shaped Australian art history, championing women artists such as Grace Cossington Smith and extending the appreciation of art beyond museum walls to include performance and environmental art. Daniel’s exhibitions and purchases – as the first museum professional at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, inaugural curator of Australian art at the National Gallery in Canberra, and director of the Art Gallery of South Australia – have defined our national canon of art.

'Covering the period from 1958 to 2020, Recent past: writing Australian art is the first anthology of Thomas’s writings and presents an overview of Australian art, at once authoritative and idiosyncratic, bringing alive both old and new art.

'Daniel life’s work has been to make art more widely understood and enjoyed. Yet most of his writings have appeared in specialist publications which are often now difficult to source. This book celebrates Daniel’s contribution to Australian art and will introduce his writings to new generations of art enthusiasts.' (Publication summary)
 
1 Editing Daniel Hannah Fink , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 79 no. 1 2019; (p. 61-69) 'In February 2020 The Recent Past: Writing Australian Art 1958–2020, the first collection of writings by Daniel Thomas, edited by myself and Steven Miller, will be published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Thomas, now 88 years old, occupies a singular position in Australian letters, one of the greatest writers of Australian art history whose contribution has not been in writing the requisite heavy tome ondensing our rag-tag and often achronological cultural history, but in hundreds of reviews, articles, essays and catalogue entries, and several (modest) books. The peculiarity of his reputation is that where he is regarded—with great affection—as a colossus in our intellectual heritage by those “in the know,” he is little known by the generations of the 21st century, and, indeed, by the general public whom he has spent his life serving. Thomas’s life’s work is so inimical to our cultural and institutional assumptions that the body of it exists not so much within the writing itself—millions and millions of marvellous words— but within what we take as the natural inheritance of our shared knowledge. His is the moving hand of Australian art history: trying to describe it, to pin it down, is like trying to describe the construction of a perfect garment by examining its tucks and seams and hand-rolled hems—to explain it from the inside out.' (Introduction)
1 2 y separately published work icon Bronwyn Oliver: Strange Things Hannah Fink , Sydney : Piper Press , 2017 12538435 2017 single work biography

This is the first book about the major Australian sculptor Bronwyn Oliver, released to coincide with The Sculpture of Bronwyn Oliver at the TarraWarra Museum of Art.

'I wanted to write an old fashioned art book, one that tells the story of the artist’s life from beginning to end,' says author Hannah Fink.

'But I also wanted to write about the creative process – how Bronwyn made things, why she made them. What drives someone to make art?'

'The most interesting artists are ones who invent their own mediums, like Robert Klippel and Rosalie Gascoigne – and Bronwyn,' says Fink.

Born on a farm near Gum Flat in Northern New South Wales, Oliver grew up in country-town Inverell. She won the Travelling Art Scholarship to study sculpture at Chelsea Art School in London, returning to win numerous awards including the Moët & Chandon Fellowship.

While many of her contemporaries began making installation art, Oliver worked within the traditional discipline of sculpture. She was an intensely ambitious artist whose works seem to grapple almost effortlessly with the big questions of life. Her organic yet strangely human sculptures are coveted by collectors for their eloquent beauty.

'But Bronwyn’s aim was not to create beautiful things for their own sake,' says Fink. 'The beauty of her objects comes from the thinking behind them.'

Oliver’s death ten years ago cast a shadow over her work and her personality. The woman that emerges from this book is intelligent, funny, modest, hard-working, and, in the words of Roslyn Oxley, 'never boring'.

'The most exciting artists are the ones who speak to us most directly, who teach us how to look at things differently,' says Fink.

'There has not been the opportunity for the public to see a lot of Bronwyn’s work all at once. I hope that this book is the beginning of Bronwyn being seen as a great Australian artist – an artist whose works belong to all students of art, and to the wider public.'

Extensively illustrated and beautifully designed, this book is well priced for the art student as well as the general reader. (Synopsis)
1 Living Death : An Online Elegy Hannah Fink , 1999 single work prose
— Appears in: Meanjin , vol. 58 no. 2 1999; (p. 21-33) Meanjin Anthology 2012; (p. 280)
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