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Justene Williams: Once We Were Mudskippers explores the expansive practice of one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. Published to accompany Williams’s first major survey at a state art gallery, this richly illustrated, colourful volume explores her multidisciplinary approach in which installation, performance, sculpture, video and costume combine in immersive environments. Bringing together significant works from the past 20 years alongside new installations, Once We Were Mudskippers reveals an artist embracing the feminist possibilities of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art’.

Drawing on the historical avant-garde while reimagining its ideas for the present, Williams transforms everyday and found materials into theatrical, multimedia installations that are playful, provocative and deeply human. From Victory Over the Sun 2016, her feminist reinterpretation of the Russian Futurist opera, to warping of time online in The Vertigoats 2021 and new installations extending her engagement with modernism and Russian costume designer Natalia Goncharova, Once We Were Mudskippers traces Williams’s ongoing transformation of avant-garde ideas through contemporary materials, media and performance videos. Like the mudskippers of the publication’s title – creatures that exist between worlds – Williams’s works are at once grounded in art history and unmistakably contemporary. Featuring an in-depth interview with the artist by Ellie Buttrose, Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA, alongside essays by art historians Victoria Perin, Susan Best and Stephen Zepke, Once We Were Mudskippers offers fresh critical perspectives on Williams’s practice. This beautifully designed book serves as both an engaging introduction to and essential resource for those familiar with her work. 

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