Staff Profiles

Dr Best has expertise in modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on conceptual art, women's art and Latin American art.  She teaches courses on: Abstraction; Psychoanalysis and Art; Art, Gender, Sexuality and the Body; Late Modern Sculpture; and Modern Latin American Art.

Her book, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011) focuses on four well-known and highly respected North and South American artists of the 1960s and 70s: Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. It shows how their work transforms the avant-garde protocols of the period by introducing an affective dimension to late modern art. This aspect of their work, while frequently noted, has never been analysed in detail. The project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant.

Her current research funded by an Australia Council Grant examines photography, witnessing and the archive. It examines the work of Anne Ferran, Rosângela Rennó, Ana Tiscornia, and Fiona Pardington. In 2012 she is curating an exhibition of Latin American kinetic works from the 1960s in the Power Collection, University of Sydney.

Recent publications

Books

Best, S. (2011) Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (London: IB Tauris).

Best, S. (2011) Robyn Backen, Backspace: The Art of Communication, Works 1990-2010 (Sydney: Bocalatte Publishing).

Chapters in Books 

Best S.  (forthcoming) “The Legacy of Tropicália in the work of Rivane Neuenschwander,” Sweat: Subtropicality in Art Design and Architecture, ed. Robert Leonard and Andrew McNamara (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art)

Best, S. (forthcoming) “Relational Art, Identification and Social Bonds,” The Institutionalization of  Contemporary Art, ed. Lisbeth Goncaves Rebollo (Sao Paulo: U of Sao Paulo Press)

Articles in Refereed Journals

Best, S. (2007) “Aesthetics and Affect: Rethinking Visual Pleasure,” Sp. Section on Silvan Tomkins. Theory and Psychology 17.4: 504-514.

Best, S. (2007) “The Serial Spaces of Ana Mendieta,” Art History 30. 1 57-82,

Best, S. (2007) “Personal Experience and Impersonal Aesthetics: The Video Work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982),” Reading Room: A Journal of Art and Culture, 1. 126 - 139.

Best, S. (2006) “Minimalism, Subjectivity and Aesthetics: Rethinking the Anti-Aesthetic Tradition in Late-Modern Art.” Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 5.3 127 - 142.

Best, S. (2006) “Lygia Clark (1920-1988) Bodily Sensation and Affect: Expression as Communion,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 6.2/7.1, 82 - 104.

Best, S, E. Grosz, H. McDonald, P. Rothfield (2006) “Deleuze and Art” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art

Best, S. (2005) “Mild Intoxication and other Aesthetic Feelings: Psychoanalysis and Art Revisited,” Angelaki 10.3

Exhibition Catalogue Essays

Best, S. (2010) “Colour, Composition and Non-composition: New Work by Virginia Coventry,” Liverpool Street Gallery, September.

Best, S. (2009) “Grid and Cloud: Maria Fernanda Cardoso’s Sheep,” exh. cat. Tamworth Regional Art Gallery.

Best, S (2009) “Tropical Dada: Maria Fernanda Cardoso’s Emuwear,” exh. cat. GrantPirrie Gallery, Sydney.

Best, S. (2004) “Tickled Pink: Laughter as Institutional Critique,” 14^th Biennale of Sydney,  98-99

Dictionary Entries

Best, S. (2004) “Joan Brassil.” The Grove Library of World Art. Oxford UP.

Articles in Non-refereed Journals

Best, S. (2011) Photography and Performativity: Review of Anne Marsh's Look Contemporary Australian Photography, Eyeline 74,  80-81

Best, S. (2010) “Old and New Romantics: The 17^th Biennale of Sydney: The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age” Eyeline, 72.

Best, S (2008) “Revolutionary Forms and Figures, Review of the 16^th Biennale of Sydney,” Column 2, 31-35.

Best, S (2008) “Between Performance and Installation,” Column 1, 132-3.

Best S, (2005) “Second Nature: The collaborative work of Sherre DeLys and Joan Grounds, Art and Australia.

Best, S (2005) “In Memoriam: Rita Joan Brassil,” Art Monthly 181 (July 2005): 20-21.

Best, S (2004) “Seriality and Insanity, The Aesthetics of Administration Revisited: Anne Ferran’s 1-38,” Eyeline, 18-21.

Reviews

 Best, S. (2006) “Biography after Conceptualism: Review of Ann Stephen’s On Looking at Looking: The Art and Politics of Ian Burn,” Eyeline  (Spring): 57.

Best, S. (2006) “Exhibition Review of Masquerade,” Art and Australia 44.1 (Spring): 117.

Best, S. (2006) “Relativism and its Discontents: Review of Rex Butler’s Radical Revisionism,” Art Monthly 196 (December): 11-12.

Best, S. (2005)  “Book Review: Crossover Art and Architecture,” Architecture Australia 94.5 (Sept/Oct):50.