About Power Publications
The Power Institute established a publications unit in 1986 to publish material generated through its own research activities. Since then, Power Publications has become a leading publisher of books in contemporary art and theory, cultural studies, media studies, and film and animation, publishing an average of two books per year.
Our aim at Power Publications is to make the latest ideas and theories concerning contemporary art and visual cultures available to a national and international readership. Our publications concern all forms of visual culture including painting, sculpture, architecture, the crafts, graphic arts, film, television, animation, video, advertising, public media, computer imagery and multimedia — all central to modernity and definitive of postmodernity.
While our publications have traditionally developed from lectures given by distinguished Australian or international scholars as part of the Public Education component of the Power Institute, or from research by academic staff members, we also publish rare English translations of major existing theoretical works by renowned thinkers such as Barthes, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari. Co-publication agreements with other publishers create further opportunities for extending the number and range of publications we produce, as well as expanding our worldwide readership. We do not generally commission books but accept works of exceptional merit which fall within the scope of our publishing aims.
Our most recent publications are A Singular Voice: Essays of Australian art and architecture by Joan Kerr, John Conomos' Mutant Media: Essays on Cinema, Art and New Media, Alan Cholodenko's Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation and Contemporary Art & Philanthropy: Private Foundations, Asia-Pacific Focus, co-published with Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. See our catalogue.
In 2006 we received a prestigious grant from the J Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles to publish a series of books, Australian Studies in Art and Art Theory. The first of these, A Singular Voice was published in November 2009, and the following three books will be launched in 2010:
- How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art: 1980 – 2006 edited by Ian McLean, co-publication with Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
- Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai Art Compared, 1980 to 1999 by John Clark
- Images of the Pacific Rim: The Aesthetic Connections Between Australia and the American West, 1850-1930 by Erika Esau
