The growing absence of meaningful ritual in contemporary Western societies has led to cohesive research on the history of ritualizing behaviour in different cultures. The relatively new field of ritology, which includes neuroscience, anthropology, cultural psychology, psychotherapy and even art and performance, raises questions about the significance and practice of ritual today. This book is the first of its kind to discuss the importance of secular rituals for cultural and personal growt...

Nominated for the 2016 Art in Literature: Mary Lynn Kotz Award, Library of VirginiaOwing to digitization, globalization and mass culture, what is deemed 'desirable' and 'of the moment' in art has increasingly followed the patterns of fashion. While in the past artistic styles were always inflected with signs of their modernity, today biennales and art markets are defined by the next big thing, the next sensation, the next new idea. But how do opinions of what is 'g...

This important new book examines contemporary art while foregrounding the key role feminism has played in enabling current modes of artmaking, spectatorship and theoretical discourse.Contemporary Art and Feminism carefully outlines the links between feminist theory and practice of the past four decades of contemporary art and offers a radical re-reading of the contemporary movement. Rather than focus on filling in the gaps of accepted histories by ‘adding’ the ‘missing’ fe...

This unique book proposes a re-reading of the relationship between artists and the contemporary museum. In Australia in particular, the museum has played a significant role in the colonial project and this has generally been considered as the predominant mode of artists' engagement with such institutions and collections. Australian Artists in the Contemporary Museum expands the post-colonial frame of reference used to interpret this work, to demonstrate the broader implications of the rela...

What would it mean to substitute care for economics as the central concern of politics? This anthology invites analysis, reflections and speculations on how contemporary artists and creative practitioners engage with, interpret, and enact care in practices which might forge an alternative ethics in the age of neoliberalism.Interdisciplinary and innovative, it brings together contributions from artists, researchers and practitioners who creatively consider how care can be practised ...

When the body is foregrounded in artwork – as in much contemporary performance, sculptural installation and video work – so is gendered and sexualised difference. Feminist Perspectives on Art: Contemporary Outtakes looks to interactions between art history, theory, curation, and studio-based practices to theorise the phenomenological import of this embodied gender difference in contemporary art.The essays in this collection are rooted in a wide variety of disciplines, incl...