The Art of Biography

Louise Martin-Chew has worked as a freelance writer, specialising in the visual arts and design, since 1992. Prior to that she worked in Sydney in exhibitions and publications management (Art Exhibitions Australia 1985-89), becoming Editorial Manager of Art & Australia quarterly journal 1990-92.

Since 1992 she has contributed regularly to national art magazines, newspapers and catalogues and was Brisbane art critic for The Australian newspaper 1997-2009. Most recently she has contributed to and authored books on Australian artists Judy Watson (2008), Fiona Foley (2009 and 2021), Stephen Hart (2011) and Robert Brownhall (2012), and Linde Ivimey (UQ Art Museum, 2012). She was awarded her doctorate in 2019 from the University of Queensland (Creative Writing) for a biography of Indigenous artist Fiona Foley which is now published as Fiona Foley Provocateur: An Art Life (QUT Art Museum, 2021).

Cheryl Leavy is a Kooma and Nguri writer whose poem Ngali – We two won the 2022 Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize. Cheryl’s first children’s book, Yanga Mother, will be published by UQP in 2024 and her second, For You Country, in 2025. Passionate about language revitalisation, Cheryl often writes in her Kooma language.