Amy Walters; courtesy the writer. Zeta Xu; courtesy the writer
‘APPRAISE’ is a new collaborative mentorship program for emerging Canberra writers initiated by Art Monthly Australasia in partnership with ACT Writers. Judges Nigel Featherstone (an author and Creative Producer at ACT Writers), Annette An-Jen Liu (an emerging curator and one of last year’s ANCA Critics-in-Residence) and Soo-Min Shim (an arts writer and Art Monthly Australasia’s Publication Manager) have selected Amy Walters and Zeta Xu as the recipients of the inaugural ‘APPRAISE’ 2021 program.
For Amy Walters, who has a background in languages and social anthropology, and who for the last three years has run her blog The Armchair Critic from Canberra, her emerging arts writing practice ‘is underpinned by a search for enchantment, and what the writer Amanda Lohrey terms “messages from another realm”: moments which encapsulate the existential precarity of human life, often centring on intimations of death or vulnerability, but also love or profound joy. Lohrey argues that these “messages” resist what is “[t]oo mastered” and “too known” by representing the “oceanic meaning underneath” the “literal surface of life”. While Lohrey’s vision relates to literature, I believe this approach can also be applied fruitfully to visual art, given the role art plays in cultivating our attention on small, often hidden details.’
For Zeta Xu, who is currently completing her Honours in Art History and Curatorship at the Australian National University in Canberra, with a particular focus on art of the diasporic Asian communities in Australia, her writing goals ultimately reside in education: ‘in changing the way that Australasian institutions, from primary and secondary to tertiary education, perceive non-western art. I believe that art writing is an enormously important way to change these views, and that Art Monthly Australasia is such a vital resource in making information about art more accessible in Australia. It is my goal not just to further my own career and experience in this field, but also to contribute to art education in a non-institutional setting (such as in media) in Australia.’
This year Walters and Xu will each take part in a three-month mentorship with Art Monthly Australasia’s editorial team, including the development of specially commissioned texts for the magazine’s print and online editions, and the opportunity to participate in a panel on arts criticism co-hosted by ACT Writers in late 2021.
Congratulations to Walters and Xu.
This project is supported by the ACT Government.
