Issue 9

When we started Artist Profile magazine in 2007, our goal was to create a publication that gave readers insight into the private working lives of artists and put the best Australasian creative talent alongside their international contemporaries. Two years and eight issues later, the editorial team decided we were up for a new challenge.

Collaborating with leading British art materials producer Winsor & Newton, we invited 11 artists on a 10-day painting expedition through the North Island of New Zealand. We assembled some of the most respected painters working in Australia today over three generations, each with their own perspective on how to absorb, sketch and paint the experience.

Some have devoted their careers to divining nature through an artist’s vision; some rarely, if ever, paint outside their own studios; some reject the rarified notion of “landscape” painting; but each has a unique take on the promise of this stunning environment to yield material, aesthetic and philosophical challenges.

One mountain, 11 answers.

In Issue 9, we profile this extraordinary trip, the camaraderie that formed among the group and talk to each of the artists about their processes – from plein air to studio – as they head back to prepare work over the coming months for the forthcoming exhibition ON THIS ISLAND, MEETING AND PARTING – which will tour Australia, New Zealand and the UK in 2010/11.

Danish-Icelander Olafur Eliasson is the wunderkind of the public gallery experience. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, will soon be hosting the survey exhibition – TAKE YOUR TIME – giving Australians a chance to experience some of the magic that drew over 2 million people to bask in his apocalyptic sunlight at London’s Tate Modern in 2003. Gillian Serisier speaks to the enigmatic Eliasson about the philosophy behind his work.

This issue also has a fresh redesign and 32 more pages to give more space to interviews and art: we talk to American performance artist and filmmaker Patty Chang; Sam Leach previews new work from an Australian graduate of the Leipzig Arts Academy, Steven Black; and Joe Frost tackles one of the most vexing quations in contemporary art – how much value should we place on originality?