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  • Published: 7 December 2001
  • ISBN: 9781740511339
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $27.99

Joy Hester




A vivid and fascinating biography of artist Joy Hester, whose recent retrospective exhibitions have received wide critical and public acclaim

A highly talented artist in her own right, Joy Hester's fame also derives from her marriage to Albert Tucker and her close friendship with John and Sunday Reed, arguably Australia's most influential art patrons. Dead at the age of forty, Joy Hester's life was intense and controversial. At a time when women were supposed to be modest and unassuming, Joy was larger than life: sexual, raw, earthy. Her relationship with Tucker was fraught and difficult – and ultimately unsustainable. This book also portrays Australia's rich and vibrant artistic community, including Nolan, Vassilieff, Perceval and Boyd.

  • Published: 7 December 2001
  • ISBN: 9781740511339
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $27.99

About the author

Janine Burke

Janine Burke is an art historian, curator and novelist. In 1977, she was the inaugural art history lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. She published Australian Women Artists: 1840-1940 (1980) and won the 1987 Victorian Premier’s literary award for Second Sight. Her books on the Heide Circle include Joy Hester (1983) and The Heart Garden: Sunday Reed and Heide (2004). She wrote The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud's Art Collection (2006) and curated Freud and Eros: Love, Lust and Longing for the Freud Museum London (2014). More recently, Burke has focused on nature. After writing Nest: The Art of Birds (2012), she curated an exhibition of nests at McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery. In 2016, she curated Human/Animal/Artist: Art Inspired by Animals there. She is Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre of Visual Arts, University of Melbourne.

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