acknowledgements

Almost all the work involved in preparing this book was completed on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Eastern Kulin nation in south-eastern Australia. Some parts of the text were prepared on the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people, also of the Eastern Kulin nation, and the Massachuseuck people in the area now known as Boston. I pay my respects to all these communities, to their ancestors and elders—past, present and future.

I am a white settler colonial Australian artist, educator and researcher with a recent Sicilian and distant Irish heritage and many other heritages I am not aware of. This book has come out of my PhD research and learns from the shared knowledge of many thinkers. Working on it has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure (apart from those very few times it was a bit of a struggle). It has utterly altered the way I understand art and marks a pivot point in my own practice. It was guided into being by my generous, fiercely intelligent and thoughtful supervisors Barbara Bolt, Tessa Laird and Kate Daw. To them I want to express my deepest gratitude. Without their considered commentary, thought-provoking conversations and guidance I would not have found my way. Kate sadly passed away during my candidature. I am grateful for all she taught me, particularly the idea that art practice can be a site of generosity, care and love. Vale Kate.

An earlier explanation of the key concept of this book which at the time was called “tacktical aesthetics” was published in the University of Melbourne Faculty of Fine Art and Music graduate student magazine VIBE and in the peer reviewed AM Journal of Art and Media Studies published by the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia. I am thankful to the reviewers of that journal for their feedback and to the editors for granting permission to republish parts of that text throughout this book. Tacktical aesthetics was also the topic of a number of papers delivered at various forums, workshops and conferences in 2019. These include Pedagogy for Existential Crises workshop (RMIT, June 2019), Curriculum Design Lab Arts Teaching Innovation seminar (University of Melbourne, September 2019), Con/servare Melbourne Forum (University of Melbourne, October 2019), Care Symposium (University of Melbourne/Latrobe University, November 2019), and The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand conference (University of Auckland, December 2019). I am indebted to those who attended to my papers with care, asking thought-provoking questions and providing encouraging feedback.

I would also like to acknowledge the influence of various organisations and reading groups that I became involved with in one way or another during my candidature and through the revision period. All of these were influential in ways that have become so enmeshed in my own thinking it is difficult to pinpoint them with acute specificity. They include the independent Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association (http://www.acrawsa.org.au) who shone a light for me on how race operates in Australian academic institutions; the University of Melbourne’s The Australia Centre (formerly the Indigenous Setter Relations Collaboration) who have shown that there is much to learn from thinking through the challenges that exist at the core of First Nation and settler Australian relationships; the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Social Equity Institute which hosted me in the 2018 PhD Program in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and in the 2018 Doctoral Academy and where I learned much about the way equality and equity function in institutionalised spaces; the University of Melbourne’s Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) which engaged me in the graduate academy program in 2019 and 2020; the Irit Rogoff / Bernard Stiegler reading group, the Millennials are Killing Capitalism reading group, the SenseLab reading group, the EcoFeminist Friday reading group, the Frantz Fanon reading group, and the unofficially titled ‘SLV’ reading group—all of which continue to be supportive and caring communities that have shown me how reading groups can be excellent breeding grounds for friendships. As reading and writing go hand in hand, I’d also like to acknowledge the ongoing influence of my writing teachers from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sara Levine and James ‘Jim’ McManus, whose voices remain in my head almost twenty years later. And finally, for this list, I’d like to acknowledge the encouragement and friendship of the people who responded to the call to build a little string figuring community: Ivylia Neimy, Judy McKinty, Peter de Jager and Ruth de Jager in Melbourne, and Parker Glynn-Adey in Toronto.

I am forever thankful to members of my wonderful Victorian College of the Arts PhD cohort, to members of the broader VCA and University of Melbourne community, and to my friends beyond these places who shared the PhD journey with me, in particular: Youjia Lu, David Simpkin, Jessica Williams, Corinna Berndt, Jacqueline Felstead, Mina Young, Alison Kennedy, Azza Zein, David Sequeira, Yvette Grant, Ruth McConchie, Danny Butt, Sarah Strauven, Jean Baulch, Nina Sanadze, Barbie Kjar, Jessica Wilson, Jess Scurry, Marcia Ferguson, Emma Balazs, Inge Hoonte, and most especially: Vanessa Godden for teaching me about citational politics, Anna Zagala for pointing to the complexity of ‘aboutness’ in art practice, Chelsea Coon for encouraging me to seek out a publisher and for letting me know that it probably wouldn’t be as difficult as I was imagining it would be (you were right!), and the beautiful and generous Kellie Wells for all the walks and all the talks. I am also very grateful to the various research convenors who helped to keep the project in line with the university’s requirements while recognising and supporting its unique proposition: Lisa Radford, John Meade, Simone Slee, Laura Woodward and the late Bernhard Sachs. I am also deeply indebted to my PhD examiners Jessica Weir and Natalie Loveless for their encouraging and detailed comments and suggestions for this revision of the thesis into a book. I know I haven’t included all those suggestions here, but they are not lost to me, and are already helping to shape my next writing project. Similarly, I am thankful for the insightful suggestions of this book’s peer reviewers. Which leads me to a most heartfelt expression of gratitude to Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes the editor of this exciting Research / Art / Writing series and to its editorial board for their encouragement and for seeing the value in the ideas presented here.

Finally, a big thanks to the Bufardeci and St Clair families who have shared their time, love, support and knowledge over these years and beyond. In particular to my father-in-law Larry St Clair who taught me the fundamentals of sailing and shared the knowledge he has gained from sixty years of recreational and competition sailing. And, of course, to my number one loves: Dan, Gena and Tony who supplied me with space, time and hot wheat bags for my hunched shoulders, and who were important sounding boards and muses, and who in the last case, kept me company for much of the writing.

And many thanks to all the strangers who tacked with me—I couldn’t have done it, or thought it, without you.