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The UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art (JNCCA) is proud to announce the launch of the first publication in the JNCCA Editions series, a pioneering initiative designed to make previously inaccessible scholarly and artworld content available to global audiences.

The first title in the series, The Tides of the Century, is a bilingual Chinese-English catalogue documenting the major survey exhibition '2020 Ocean Flower Island International Art Exhibition–The Tides of the Century', staged at the Ocean Flower Island Museum, Danzhou City, Hainan Province, China.

This landmark exhibition featured artists from over 20 countries and showcased a wide range of contemporary art forms, including installation, sculpture, painting, and new media. The catalogue not only documents the scale and diversity of the exhibition but also offers critical essays exploring how contemporary art responds to pressing global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Co-edited by UNSW Visiting Professor Wang Chunchen of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, and UNSW Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art Paul Gladston, this richly illustrated edition presents critical reflections on the role of art in a time of heightened global uncertainty and transformation. The volume includes a selection of essays by internationally renowned contributors. Among them is Professor Gladston’s essay, ‘Art in the Time of COVID-19: Poly/Cacophonous Contemporaneity and the Rolling back of Post-Cold War Globalisation.’

Originally intended for release alongside the 2020 exhibition, the catalogue’s publication was delayed by the pandemic. It is now presented for the first time in a carefully edited and expanded form, aligned with the JNCCA’s mission to preserve and share vital cultural narratives that might otherwise have remained unpublished.

Produced in collaboration with Bauhinia Publication, PRC, this edition is available free of charge in electronic format through the JNCCA website. Limited hard copies will be made available in due course on a first-come, first-served basis.

To download the book, visit:

The JNCCA Editions series publishes writing related to the work of the UNSW Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art. Each edition in the series presents an existing/previously planned publication or combination of publications in a newly edited and/or expanded format both in hard copy and electronically. Some editions will be produced in collaboration with other publishers; some will include texts that have undergone independent scholarly peer review. Planned publications include catalogues accompanying exhibitions curated or supported by the Chair. All the editions have a dedicated ISBN number and contain English and corresponding Chinese texts. JNCCA editions aims to publish books whose content was not made public due to lack of funding, unforeseen events, or restrictions on freedom of critical expression.

More information about the JNCCA Editions can be found here.