Bundanon

Louise Martin-Chew has worked as a freelance writer, specialising in the visual arts and design, since 1992.

For thirty years she has contributed regularly to national art magazines, newspapers and catalogues. She has authored books on Australian artists including women of Brisbane: judy watson (Museum of Brisbane, 2021), blood language: Judy Watson (Miegunyah Press, MUP, 2008), Forbidden: Fiona Foley (UQ Art Museum, 2009), and Linde Ivimey (UQ Art Museum, 2012). She was awarded her doctorate in 2019 for a biography published as Fiona Foley Provocateur: An Art Life (QUT Art Museum, 2021) which won Best Book in the 2022 AA ANZ awards (joint prize) and was shortlisted for the 2022 Magarey Medal for Biography. She contributed a chapter to Speculative Biography: Experiments, Opportunities and Provocations (Routledge Auto/Biography Studies, 2022). Her most recent book is Margot McKinney: World of Wonder (Museum of Brisbane, 2022).  

In Residence At Bundanon

I am developing a manuscript in a genre outside my usual writing practice (art writing and art biography). In this more personal memoir/creative non-fiction text titled Voiceless, I trace the impact and progression of a rare anxiety disorder on my daughter’s early life (she is now aged 23). It is framed with a parallel eco-narrative about drought (experienced between 2006 and 2009 in south-eastern Queensland) and its desiccation of the bushland outside Brisbane where I live and work. During the residency I plan to spend two weeks editing and refining this work in preparation for submission to publishers.