Book review
In the first issue of eyeline magazine in May 1987, Urszula Szulakowska argued in 'Brisbane Dada: Collaborative Art in a Stagnant Culture' that younger generation Brisbane artists were adopting Dadaist strategies in a 'state of emergency consciousness' against the 'unusually repressive socio-political conditions' of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government (15, 17). Some ten years later, she has expanded this thesis in Experimental Art in Queensland, 1975-1995: An Introductory Study. It has been awaited with perhaps unrealistic expectations.
Szulakowska's focus is on what she describes as 'radical, experimental' art, that which 'privileges idea above image, discussion above rhetoric' (i), and which resists commodification and the market. Her study covers a period before her arrival in Brisbane in the early 1980s as a Lecturer in the Department of Art History (then Fine Arts) at the University of Queensland, and continues after her departure in 1990. She returned to undertake a brief period of intense research in 1997, examining documents and consulting widely within the community.
Her present position within a university in England, Szulakowska argues, should have 'removed some of the heat from my interpretation since I am no longer one of the contenders within the Queensland art-scene' (iii). While hoping for critical distance, she remains partisan. It is clear that Szulakowska is writing this account precisely because of her longstanding support for particular 'experimental' practices within Queensland, or perhaps more particularly, Brisbane. Szulakowska is fondly remembered for her ever-enthusiastic support of younger Brisbane artists and her regular visits to the then-emerging artist-run spaces and the Institute of Modern Art. She was a lecturer who inspired us with her depth of knowledge, sharp and spirited observations, and intellectual integrity. She inspired