Latest Release:
Slow Reveal by
Paul McGillick

Paul McGillick is a writer specialising in art, architecture and design. After an academic career in applied linguistics and foreign language teaching, he worked for many years in architecture and design publishing, with a 3-year period in arts television and a 15 year stint as visual and performing arts critic for the  Australian Financial Review. He has published 19 books and countless articles and catalogue essays and today works as a independent writer, mainly in the visual arts.

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Rear View Mirror​

Looking back, I realise I’ve always followed my nose. No Plan. I must have a very good guardian angel because somehow it’s always turned out for the best. My career spans writing about the visual arts, architecture and design (as well as publishing roles in those areas), writing and production in radio and television, and academic teaching and research in linguistics and language teacher training. Read More

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Return to Visual Art Writing

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Despite my diverse career, I have always been a writer. I’ve published 19 books along with many contributions to books – on the theatre, the visual arts and architecture, especially residential architecture in S-E Asia, along with countless articles and catalogue essays. After many years as Editorial Director and later Consulting Editor at IndesignMedia, I have now switched my attention away from architecture and design and back to the visual arts.

My latest book is Slow Reveal – The Nude in Australian Art (Yarra & Hunter Arts Press). It is a survey of the history and many manifestations of the nude in Australian art from 1842 up to the present day. The story of the Australian nude is put in the context of international art, socio-cultural developments in Australia, and the many issues thrown up by the nude such as the life class and the naked/nude distinction. While focussed on the nude, it gradually reveals itself as a re-telling of the history of Australian art through the lens of the nude.

Slow Reveal is pitched at a general readership, but is also an excellent reference book for anyone interested in the story of Australian art. It encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography up to the present day and is handsomely illustrated with 150 full-colour reproductions.

Cultural Conversations

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All the time I continue to work with Dr Bob Jansen on the Cultural Conversations project, an online oral history archive of Australian and South Korean visual artists. Using customised software, the archive offers extensive video interviews with the artists, a parallel transcript and still images of work referred to in the interviews. Recently added are interviews with sculptor, Ron Robertson-Swann, painters, Dick Watkins and Kevin Connor, curator/printmaker, Akky van Ogtrop and sculptor, Jan King.​