Curriculum Vitae
Dr. ASHLEY CRAWFORD
Born 1960
Key Positions:
2018: Senior Research Fellow, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne
2016: Awarded Doctor of Philosophy, University of Melbourne
2013-2016: – PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne
2011-2013-: Freelance writer, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The New Zealand Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Monthly, Eyeline, VAULT, Australian Art Collector, Artlink and other publications.
2008-2011: Editor, Photofile magazine. Published by the Australian Centre for Photography, Photofile is Australia’s leading photo-media magazine.
2003-2009: Commissioning Editor, Thames & Hudson Books. Establishment of the New Arts series including books on Ricky Swallow, Adam Cullen, Lisa Roet, David Noonan and Linda Marrinon and the overview of New Media Arts, Interzone by Darren Tofts.
2007-2008: Art Critic, The Sunday Age
2000-2002: Executive Editor; Artbyte magazine, New York. Employed to overhaul the look and content of the magazine for re-launch in 2001. This included employing new staff, generating a new body of contributors and overseeing a new design approach. Contributors secured included Rick Poynor, Simon Reynolds, Mark Dery, Richard Kadrey, Steven Shaviro, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Bruce Sterling and Andrew Ross.
1999-2000: Executive Producer; ITVWorld.com, Sydney. Australasia’s leading on-line digital video and audio broadcast company producing original entertainment, business and finance content for such clients as Telstra (Australia’s largest telco), Microsoft, Ozemail (Australia’s largest e-mail service), optus@home and ninemsn. Position involved direct liaison with clients, the direct production of video and audio programs for transmission via the Internet, establishing the creative team and overseeing the development of the website and corporate identity: <www.itvworld.com>.
1993-99: Publisher and Editor-in-Chief; World Art magazine. (Melbourne/New York/Amsterdam), World Art published original work by such well known artists and writers as Kathy Acker, Robert Hughes, Tom Wolfe, Bruce Sterling, David Byrne, Michael Moorcock, Iain Sinclair, Jeanette Winterson, Lydia Lunch, Rudy Rucker, Greil Marcus, Mark Dery, Barney Hoskyns, R.U. Sirius, Margaret Wertheim, McKenzie Wark, Bill Viola, The Starn Twins, Joel Peter-Witkin, Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelly, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger
1990-93/1994-99: Publisher and Editor-in-Chief; 21•C, an international magazine of technology, science and culture. The magazine published original work by such well-known writers as J.G. Ballard, William Gibson, Kathy Acker, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Mark Dery, Andrew Ross, R.U. Sirius, Claudia Springer, Margaret Wertheim, Theodore Roszak, McKenzie Wark and Erik Davis. The magazine was originally published by The Australian Commission For The Future (editor 1990-93) before brokering a deal with the Swiss-based publishers Gordon & Breach which gave it an international focus (publisher/editor: 1994-99). Australian contributors included Phillip Adams, Barry Jones, Robyn Williams, Paul Davies, Catharine Lumby, Darren Tofts, McKenzie Wark, John Spooner and Bruce Petty. 21•C also sponsored lecture tours in Australia by Noam Chomsky and Kathy Acker.
1990-93: Communications Manager: The Australian Commission For The Future. Position included public relations and speech writing.
1983-90: Publisher and Editor-in-Chief: Tension magazine (25 issues). An independent bi-monthly of culture. Tension published original work by Nick Cave, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, Paul Taylor, Adrian Martin, Catharine Lumby, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon and numerous others.
1987-89: Senior Consultant: WMCC Public Relations. Clients included Carlton & United Breweries, Time magazine, Business Review Weekly, Elders Resources, Thomson White & Partners Advertising, Moët & Chandon Champagne, The 7.30 Report (ABC TV), Western Mining Corporation and Laminex Industries.
1986-87: Director: Artists’ Week, Adelaide Festival.
1986-87: Editor: Video Week, Australia’s first weekly video industry magazine.
1985-86: Assistant Director: The Australian Centre For Contemporary Art.
1980-83: Founder and editor of monthly culture magazine The Virgin Press (22 issues).
1978-83: Journalist: The Melbourne Herald
Books:
Cultural Studies (International)
2018: Dark Gnosis: Religious Imaging in Millennialist America (Palgrave MacMillan, New York)
1997: Transit Lounge: Wake Up Calls and Traveller’s Tales from the Future. co-editor, (Gordon & Breach, Sydney/Amsterdam)
Visual Arts (Australia)
2017: Gareth Sansom Transformer, with Sebastian Smee (National Gallery of Victoria)
2017: Photo by Martin Kantor, with Richard Guilliatt (Hardie Grant)
2016: Transformations: The Art of Sonia Payes (Thames & Hudson)
2012: The Art of James Davis (Australian Scholarly Publishing)
2011: First Life (Xin Dong Cheng Art Space, Beijing/24HR Art, Darwin)
2009: Rhys Lee, with Edward Colless (Spencer Design, Melbourne)
2007: Stephen Bush: Gelderland (Sante Fe Museum, New Mexico)
2006: Directory of Australian Art (Craftsman House)
2003: Lines of Fire: Tim Storrier’s Works on Paper (Thames & Hudson).
2002: Wimmera: The Work of Philip Hunter (Thames & Hudson).
2002: Lake Eyre and Beyond: The William Creek Series (Craftsman House).
2001: Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley – Updated and Revised, with Ray Edgar, (Craftsman House)
1997: Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley, with Ray Edgar, (Craftsman House)
Books as Commissioning Editor (Craftsman House/Thames & Hudson)
2007: Linda Marinon: Let Her Try by Chris McAuliffe
2005: Interzone: Media Arts In Australia by Darren Tofts
2005: Lisa Roet: Uncommon Observations by Alexie Glass
2005: David Noonan: Before and Now by Joanna Fahey
2004: Ricky Swallow: Field Recordings by Justin Paton
2004: Adam Cullen: Scars Last Longer by Ingrid Periz
2000: Parallax by Darren Tofts
1998: Kim Westcott by Roger Taylor
1998: Memory Trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture by Darren Tofts and Murray McKeich
1996: Art & Suburbia by Chris McAuliffe
1995: Peripheral Visions: Contemporary Australian Art 1970-1994 by Charles Green
e-Books as Commissioning Editor (21•Cmagazine.com)
2011: Memory Trade: A Prehistory of Cyberculture by Darren Tofts and Murray McKeich (2nd edition)
Curator:
2017: NOTFAIR 2017: The Shadow Factory with Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd, Melbourne
2016: Heart Beat: Lisa Roet, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide Festival, 2016, Adelaide.
2014: Cabinet of Curiosities: Oursler Roet Stelarc, Forum Theatre, White Night Melbourne
NOTFAIR 2014 with Sam Leach, Melbourne
2013: Down To The Line, Bett Gallery, Hobart
2013: The World Below, White Night Festival, Melbourne
2012: NOTFAIR 2012: Primal Mutation with Sam Leach and Melissa Amore, Melbourne
2012: NOTFAIR 2012: Primal Mutation with Steve Eland, Sam Leach and Melissa Amore, 24HR Art, Darwin
2010: Gareth Sansom, The 2010 TarraWarra Biennial, Melbourne
2010: NOTFAIR with Sam Leach and Tony Lloyd, Melbourne
2009: Dark Liaisons: Belle Bassin, Tony Garifalakis, Irene Hanenbergh, Simon Pericich, 24HR Art, Darwin
2008: The Resurrectionists, with Sam Leach. Block Projects, Melbourne
2008: Bal Taschit: Thou Shalt Not Destroy, with Melissa Amore. Jewish Museum of Australia
2002: Drawing The Line: works on paper: Greg Ades, Adam Cullen, Sharon Goodwin, Rodney Pople, Lisa Roet, Heather B. Swann and Peter Walsh. Crossley Scott Gallery, Melbourne.
1998: Still Lives: Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.
1994: Where Angels Fear To Tread: The Work of Dale Frank, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne.
1990: The Greenpeace Fund Raising Exhibition (co-curator), Linden Gallery St.Kilda, Melbourne.
1990: Loaded (co-curator with Max Delany), 13 Verity Street Gallery, Melbourne.
1986: Falls The Shadow, Reconnaissance Gallery, Melbourne. Featuring Tony Clark, Lindy Lee, Geoff Lowe and John Young.
1985: Visual Tension, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
Selected book contributions
2016: Many Hands: The Australian Tapestry Workshop (HarperCollins)
2014: Rob Brown: The Sacred and the Profane, (Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory)
2013: Impresario: Paul Taylor, The Melbourne Years, 1981–1984, (Monash University Press, Melbourne)
2012: Caterpillars & Computers: Keith Haring in Australia, (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne)
2011: Trevor Nickolls: This Way Art, (Miegunyah Press, Melbourne)
2008: Neo Goth, (University of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane)
2007: Gareth Sansom. Mike Parr, Guan Wei; Untitled: Sonia Payes, Portraits of Australian Artists, (MacMillan Books.)
2007: The Art of the Collection, (State Library of Victoria/Melbourne University Publishing)
2006: Unfinished Journey, (MacMillan Books.)
1999: See here now: The Vizard Foundation Art Collection of the 1990s, (Craftsman House)
1996: Hot Type: What’s Here. What’s Happening in Australian New Writing, (Penguin Books)
Selected Catalogues
2016: Dark Beauty: Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd, Cang Xin, Shi Jinsong
Heidi Yardley’s Cadavre Exquis
Rhys Lee: Hopeful Monsters
2015: Doble & Strong, Thou Shalt Not Clone
Video Drones: Heath Franco
2014: Ian Strange, Deus ex Domus, (2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art)
Apocalypse New: Anthony White
2013: Doble & Strong, Beauty: Interrupted – disease and desire
Down to the Line
Louise Forthun, Glass and Light
Paul White, Silent Running
Michael Peck, Nostalgia, melancholia and introspection
Simon Finn: Archeologist of Aesthetics
Sonia Payes: Interzone
Mia Salsjo: Mystical Catharsis
Laith McGregor: The Unheimlich
2012:
Becc Orszag: The Orszag Codex
The artists camp (Bali)
Jeremy Kible: The Glass Asylum
2010:
Sam Leach, London
This May Hurt: Michael Peck, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
The Funeral Party, The Seaview Ballroom, Melbourne
The Phrenologist: Terry Taylor, Scott Livesey Galleries, Melbourne
2009:
Adam Cullen, 24HR Art, Darwin
Rhys Lee: Molten Birth, Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
Gareth Sansom: The Garden of Alchemical Delights, John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne
Heidi Yardley, GrantPirrie, Sydney
2008:
Students of Nature: The Resurrectionists, (with Sam Leach) Block Projects, Melbourne
The Unnamable: Rhys Lee, Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney
Peter Daverington, Arc1 Gallery, Melbourne
The Goth Within, Neo Goth, University of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Sam Leach, Sullivan & Strumpf, Sydney
Bal Taschit: Thou Shalt Not Destroy, (with Melissa Amore) Jewish Museum of Australia, Melbourne
David Ralph: Unnatural Voyeurs of the Natural, Arc1 Gallery, Melbourne
Chris Bond: The Ressurectionist, New08, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne
Christopher Koller: The Obsessive, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne
Kate Shaw: Terra Nullis, Sullivan & Strumphf Fine Art, Sydney
John Firth-Smith, John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne
2007:
Pat Brassington: Planeta Inquietante. Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.
Stephen Bush: Gelderland. Sante Fe Museum, New Mexico, USA
U-Turn, Glendale Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Peter Wegner: The Burden. Australian Galleries, Melbourne.
Togart Contemporary Art Award, Parliament House, Darwin.
Marc de Jong: Media Dreaming. Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney.
Culture Trackers, 24HR Art, Darwin
Fiona Omeenyo: New life. Niagara Galleries Melbourne.
Sue Ford: Not Blinded by the Site. Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.
2006:
Jane Burton: Dark Thoughts. Johnston Gallery, Perth.
Linde Ivimey’s Revelation. Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney.
Kate Shaw: Pattern Recognition. Luxe Gallery, New York.
Hell’s Kitchen. Michael Carr Fine Art, Sydney.
Giles Rider: A Cool Armageddon. John Buckley Gallery, Melbourne.
Gosia Wlodarczak: I see therefore I am. Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.
Alex Spremberg: Paintworks 2004-2006. Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne.
Todd Hunter: Just Like The Night. Scott Liversey Galleries, Melbourne.
2005:
Balgo 2005. Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi. Melbourne.
2004:
Guy Benfield. New04. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
2003: Matthew Johnson, Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne.
2002:
Drawing The Line: works on paper, Crossley Scott Gallery, Melbourne.
Australia at ARCO, Australia Council catalogue for ARCO, Barcelona, Spain.
A person looks at a work of art… The Michael Buxton Contemporary Australian Art Collection, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne.
2001: Greg Ades: Dwelling, Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Peter Walsh works on paper, Laurraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne.
1999: Glossy Faces: Magazines. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
See here now: Vizard Foundation Art Collection of the 1990s, Craftsman House, Melbourne.
1998: Claustrophobia, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK.
1996: Tim Storrier: Ritual, Sherman Galleries, Sydney.
1995: Tim Storrier: Evening, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne.
1993: Where Angels Fear To Tread; Dale Frank, Drawings 1980-1992, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne.
1985: Visual Tension, a magazine/catalogue featuring original work by 25 Australian artists, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Freelance writer:
The Australian, The Guardian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age, Business Review Weekly, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, The New Zealand Herald, Art & Australia, The Bulletin, GQ, The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Vogue, VAULT, Black & White, Art Monthly, Australian Art Collector, Artist Profile, Eyeline, Art World, Conde Nast Traveller, Mercedes magazine, The Melbourne Herald, The Herald Sunday Magazine, RealTime, Desktop, Photofile, The Interior, Follow Me, The National Times, Polis, Juke, Tracks and various other publications.
- Translated works – catalogues/magazines: Japanese, Chinese, Italian, French, German.
- Television
2007: The Arts Show: Linde Ivimey, ABC Television.
2000: Presenter, Howard’s Way, documentary on Howard Arkley, ABC Television.
1999: Presenter, The Arts Show: Howard Arkley, ABC Television.
Other positions and publications
2017: Nominated for Vice Chancellor Award 2017, University of Melbourne.
2011: Academic Advisor, ArtWall magazine, Shanghai
2001: Public Relations. Clients include the Victorian State Government, The Australia Council, MAB Corporation, BHP, Thames & Hudson, Rio Tinto, The Vizard Foundation, Asia Pacific Building Corporation, Fine Arts Press, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Monash University, Melbourne University, Sante Fe Museum, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne University Press, MacMillan Books and more.
1994: Published the inaugural issue of Science Spectra, a new international quarterly science magazine.
1992: Author: Interview, John Nixon: an independently published monograph.
1991-93: Co-Host, cultural affairs program High and Low, 3RRR-FM Radio.
1991: Appointed to the Film Australia policy think tank.
1990: Editor, The ABSA Report, a quarterly magazine for The Elizabethan Trust’s Australian Business Support For the Arts organisation. Alongside editing and production management, organised sponsorship from Qantas, Epson Computers, Daikyo and Coca Cola.
1990: Editor of a special edition of Imprint, the magazine of the Print Council of Australia.
1988-89: Managing Editor of the popular culture magazine Xpress.
1998: Managing Editor of the creative advertising/graphics magazine Cut.
1989-90: Feature Writer for the Melbourne Herald.
1988: Author of the Bicentennial Pursuit of Excellence book for BHP.
1988: Author of Let Them Eat Cake, a book on the art of Victor Majzner.
1986: Co-author of One Hundred Years of Power – the story of the Lawrence & Hanson Electrical Company.
1986: Book Editor for MacMillans Publishers.
1981-83: Journalist and editor on alternative lifestyle magazine Ziriuz. Guest Editor, Juke magazine, Fairfax.
1979: Assistant Editor on Aircraft magazine.
Awards
2013: Australian Postgraduate Award (APA)
1997: 21•C: The Folio Award for Magazine Design Excellence (USA).
1996: 21•C: The Folio Award for Best Use of Typography (USA);
The Visual Club Award of Excellence for Covers (USA);
The Galley Club Award for Excellence (Australia).
World Art: The Visual Club Award of Excellence for Covers (USA).
1995: 21•C: The Michael Daley Award for Science Journalism;
The New York Folio Award for design.
World Art: The Visual Club Publication Cover Award of Excellence, (USA)
1994:World Art: Silver medal for typography; Australian National Print Awards.
1992: 21•C: The Australian Writers and Art Directors Award for design.
1989:Tension: Melbourne Art Directors Award for Best Printed Item
1987: Tension: The Melbourne Art Directors Awards for illustration and design.
1986:Tension: The Australian Writers and Art Directors Award for illustration and design.
Selected Lectures and panels
2016: End Of Days, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
2015: TERRОЯ2 ✹ Simon Pericich, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide
2014: American Schizo, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
2011: Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce on contemporary Australian art
Annie Liebowitz, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Swinburne University on contemporary art criticism, Melbourne
The Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts on art writing, Melbourne
2011; 24HR Art, ‘Dark Themes’ in Australian Art, Darwin
2008: Neo Goth: Back in Black, University of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Melbourne Writers Festival, Melbourne
Megan Walsh, Devonport Regional Gallery, Tasmania
2007: Adelaide Festival of the Arts on the state of art criticism, Adelaide
State Library of Victoria on portraiture, Melbourne
Australian Centre for Photography on art publishing, Sydney
2006: National Gallery of Victoria on art education, Melbourne
2002: Prahran College on new arts media, Melbourne
2001: Swinburne University, on new media technology and journalism, Melbourne
Deakin University on The Media and the Arts, Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria on Postmodernism and the Visual Arts, Melbourne
Gould Galleries on the work of Howard Arkley, Melbourne
2000: New York University on New Media Arts, New York
Swinburne University on new media technology and journalism, Melbourne
1999: The Museum of Contemporary Art, on new art, Sydney
1998: Exit Art, New York, on contemporary culture, New York
Disinformation conference, on cyber fiction, New York.
1997: The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on contemporary culture, Melbourne
1996: Sydney Writers Festival on independent publishing, Sydney
1996: The Melbourne Next Wave Festival on new art, Melbourne
1993: University of Tasmania on media coverage of the arts, Hobart
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on media coverage of the arts, Melbourne
The Sydney Institute of Technology Journalism Department on independent publishing, Sydney
1992: The National Gallery of Victoria on contemporary Australian Visual Art, Melbourne
University of Melbourne on Futures Studies, Melbourne
1991: 200 Gertrude Street Gallery on arts publishing,
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on contemporary Australian art, Melbourne
Apple MacIntosh Publishing conference, Melbourne
1988: Monash University on publishing and the arts, Melbourne
1985: The Institute of Modern Art on contemporary Australian art, Brisbane
1984: George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne on Australian arts publications, Melbourne
Travel
2014: Indonesia
2013: Hong Kong • Japan • Indonesia
2012: Timor-Leste
2011: Beijing, Hong Kong
2010: China, Tibet, Hong Kong, Arnhem Land
2009: Portugal, Madrid, London
2009: Indonesia
2008: Japan.
2006: Arnhem Land, Central Australia. Bestowed the Skin Name Ngarridj of the Yirridjdja moiety by Traditional Owner Donald Gumurdul (deceased 2013).
2005: Sri Lanka • Arnhem Land, Australia.
2004: Egypt, Israel, Thailand
2004: Cambodia
2003: Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa.
2001: Artists camp, Lake Eyre, South Australia.
2000: New York (resident 18 months), New Orleans, Linz, Tokyo.
1999: Amsterdam, Venice, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Mexico.
1998: The Netherlands (resident four months), The Czech Republic, New York, London • Kakadu artists camp, Northern Australia.
1997: Korea, Japan, Venice, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam.
1996: Turkey.
1995: San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong.
1994: Indonesia.
1994: Singapore, New York.
1993: Vietnam.
1993: Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles.
1991: Japan.
1989: Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, Singapore.
Comments and media
Dark Gnosis
“Like the old prophets Ballard and Baudrillard, as well as Mark Dery and Slavoj Žižek (on a good day), Ashley Crawford practices cultural criticism as a high-low art of forensic pathology. Casting a scalpel-sharp eye on the enigmas of fleshy abjection in recent American literature, film, and art, Crawford then links this visceral weirdness to the apocalypse cultures of the recent and distant past. Along the way, Crawford convincingly argues that such epidermal eschatology is not so much a symptom of nihilism as a mutant expression of an American gnostic religion now gone feral and deranged.”
– Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
“With just the right balance of postmodern theory and pop intellectualism, Ashley Crawford explores the visions of apocalypse that were always there, in the night terrors of our New Jerusalem. Crossing the brio of his fellow Aussie Robert Hughes with an oracular style familiar from Baudrillard’s America, Crawford reveals American Christianity for the mutant thing it is: the dark side of the Enlightenment, haunted by gnostic strains and gothic tendencies. Dark Gnosis should take the place of every Gideons bible in every motel on Route 666.”
— Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams
“Dark Gnosis takes us into the heart of America’s schizophrenic relationship with the apocalypse, the simultaneous fear and fascination with The End. Crawford’s thrilling analysis of end-time dreaming in the works of influential artists, writers and filmmakers shows how the religious imaginary remains integral to our cultural DNA.”
— Margaret Wertheim, author of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace and Physics on the Fringe.
Magazines
“21•C is, flat out, the best looking and most determinedly eclectic pop-futurological publication in the world…. An editorial gestalt willing to fearlessly consider any futurological possibility whatever, to interrogate anything at all for its potential as fast feed into some possible future.”
– William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition.
“I’m a novelist, journalist, and futurist, and I like to consider myself well-informed, but I’m guaranteed to subscribe to anything Ashley Crawford sees fit to publish. He has more on the ball than any thirty average pundits.”
– Bruce Sterling, author of The Hacker Crackdown.
“Ashley Crawford is, quite simply, one of the world’s great publishing innovators. With maverick magazine concepts like World Art and 21•C, he has demonstrated the uncanny ability to identify significant cultural trends, as well as the insight necessary to find and attract writers who can describe seemingly complex phenomena in a language that is accessible to the widest possible audience. With style, wit, and an emphasis on substance over hype, Crawford’s publications consistently break new ground, discover new talent, and make sense of the ever-changing cultural landscape.”
– Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus, Coercion, and The Ecstasy Club.
“World Art was different for two reasons: unlike other art magazines that presumed to speak for the world, but instead focused strictly on New York City, it was not parochial, which is to say provincial, and it never settled into a format. It never became predictable. It was always ready to try anything. I don’t think this is simply because it didn’t last forever.”
– Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces, Mystery Train and Dead Elvis.
“A brilliant collection of articles that read like news bulletins from the future. Everyone on the way to the day after tomorrow should read Transit Lounge.”
– J.G. Ballard, author of Crash and The Empire of the Sun.
“Ashley Crawford is a writer’s editor, a damn-the-torpedoes visionary in an age when M.B.A.’s rule the newsroom. A true believer in the unfashionable notion that he can never go wrong over-estimating the intelligence of his readers, he made 21•C and World Art the sold-out bibles of a fervent following of trendspotters, tastemakers, and ordinary readers starved for sharp, smart writing. Both were smart, stylish forums for incisive writing about pop culture, politics, mass media, and megatrends just over the horizon, fifteen minutes into the future. And that design! In these post-literate times, when readability is often sacrificed on the altar of tragic hipness, Crawford’s magazines struck a rare balance between readability, warp-drive design, and the swoony seductions of the coffee-table art book. No wonder I found myself savoring every issue cover to cover, to the consternation of other editors, bemoaning my broken deadlines. They have only Ashley Crawford to blame.”
– Mark Dery, author of Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century and The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink.
“Two of the best magazines ever to come out of Australia were Tension and 21•C. What they have in common is only one thing: Ashley Crawford. Not being a really big art buff I was a bit less interested in World Art, another Crawford initiative. Until I saw it. He managed to put together a team that could make contemporary art lively and interesting. I’m not quite sure what his secret is. He just has a way of tapping the zeitgeist. And he’s been doing it for 20 years. People who know magazines know Ashley Crawford. I’ve seen his publications in boardrooms, under glass in museums. There’s even an episode of The X Files that was inspired by a story in 21•C. Given the resources I’m sure he’ll do it all again.”
– McKenzie Wark, author of Virtual Geography and The Virtual Republic.
“Global is on everyone’s lips these days, but World Art and 21•C were the real thing. They offered a truly international view of cultural affairs that had punch and verve and polemic.”
– Andrew Ross, author of Strange Weather and The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life.
“In a world where fragmentation of media seems to be the prevailing mode, Ashley Crawford and the small team at World Art and 21•C turned out not one, but two thrillingly interdisciplinary magazines. Bringing together the worlds of art and technology, science and culture, is their speciality. At a time when the humanities and sciences seem ever more separated from one another, and when the ‘science wars’ are continuing to divide the academy, magazines that bridge these divides are increasingly essential. No one has done it better than Crawford and his colleagues. 21•C, especially, was the most unique and interesting magazine it has been my pleasure to write for.”
– Margaret Wertheim, author of Pythagoras Trousers and The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet.
“When my own Mondo 2000 hit the skids, I thought it was all over for interesting and creative convergences of post-modern obsessions; with digital technology, science, art, culture, rebellion, theory. But thanks to Ashley Crawford, there was 21•C and World Art – hip, intelligent, fun, expansive, everything that Wired wasn’t. I’m always hoping for more from Crawford.”
– R.U. Sirius, founder of Mondo 2000, author of How To Mutate and Take Over The World and The Real Cyberpunk Fake Book.
“21•C and World Art were, for the relatively short time they were around, simply the best magazines tapping the emerging artistic, cultural, and technological zeitgeist of the next century. I say this first and foremost as a writer who wants to address a well-informed but popular audience without squeezing myself into the narrow and short-sighted confines of most popular magazines, with their obsession with bite-size bits of information, celebrities, and new products. I say this also as a reader who wants intelligent, well-written essays, articles and interviews that are accessible and fun to read but aren’t afraid to make reference to important intellectual and scientific debates. And the things looked absolutely amazing – graphics and images that add information, but also carry on another dialogue with the future we should all be thinking and talking about. I trust Ashley Crawford and crew to push that dialogue forward in a way that will make the kind of great, general purpose technoculture magazine on emerging trends that we, readers and writers like myself, desperately need.”
Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis.
“21•C had many qualities that made it distinctive. Its variety and unpredictability made it difficult to identify any singular contribution to the accelerated countdown to the future that has become so rampant in the last decade of the 20th century. However its determination to cross all checkpoints was in fact the quality that made it stand out from the crowd. 21•C was less pretentious and fashion conscious than Mondo 2000 and much broader in its scope than Wired. It recognized that the contemporary world was multi-faceted and fuzzy, a poetic body sans organs that was as dependent as ever upon all areas of pre-digital cultural production. Unlike other publications attending to the trajectories of the present into the future, 21•C recognized the importance of memory as well, and did its best to tease out its traces and demonstrate their propulsive force in the casting of these trajectories. Above all else the magazine was a preparatory guide, a concentration of reconnaissance dispatches from the future: 21•C: Mode d’emploi, a user’s manual for the world to come.”
– Darren Tofts, RealTime.
Media
World Art
“While most art mags cover the dead and the nearly dead of the art establishment, World Art plays with high-voltage wires in the rain… Young and experimental, this is the art forum to be in.”
– Wired, September 1996
“World Art is a thick, glossily produced number with MTV-like graphics and a wild sense of humor that is usually lacking in art publications…. Now we’ll see if the art world is ready for the massive changes the Net and the information highway has to offer.”
– The New York Observer, March 1994
“World Art succeeds on levels of readability and practicality where other publications simply baffle…. By asking frank questions and forgoing impenetrable artspeak, the magazine’s articles end up both intelligent and accessible…. With this magazine a gracious amount of aesthetic pleasure is reinfused into a realm rendered dreary by the pundits and polemicists. Its outlook is optimistic and presentation keen; World Art appeals to a disenchanted population that has long been told that art is not for it.”
– Wired, July 1995
“A knockout! Clearly a winner. World Art is world class. A stunning publication that constantly surprises.”
– Folio, January 1997
“This magazine has a strong feeling of currency. Excellent pictorial reproduction and design combines with canny editing to make this new mag instantaneously attractive.”
– The Melbourne Age, March 1994
21•C
“A beautifully designed magazine of culture, technology and science.”
– The Guardian, UK, May 1996
“A magazine with substance and a really great art department…. Very cool.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, USA, September 1997
Australia’s 21•C, edited by Ashley Crawford, was probably the best magazine of the ‘90s. 21•C, was the most unabashedly intellectual and forward-thinking journal that I have ever seen, anywhere. And it was a striking and beautifully designed product to hold in your hands. Each issue was finely crafted, I must say. To have my own writing published alongside the likes of Erik Davis, Mark Dery, Greil Marcus, Hakim Bey, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, R.U. Sirius and Kathy Acker was an honor.
– Richard Metzger, Editor, Dangerous Minds, 2011
“This is an extremely well-researched, expressively written, highly engaging thesis. It takes on an ambitious topic: to survey and analyse religious imagery (especially of an apocalyptic nature) and its place in the collective, contemporary American psyche or consciousness. The work on this thesis has been very thorough. Once the key works for analysis were identified, a great deal of relevant literature, at all levels of complexity (from journalistic to scholarly) was duly consulted. The author is clearly working from a deep familiarity with certain ‘waves’ of cultural production and successive Western zeitgeists from postmodernism in the 1980s and cyberpunk in the 1990s through to steampunk in the 2000s, and beyond
– Associate Professor Adrian Martin, Monash University
End of Days: Religious Imaging in Millennialist America PhD, 2016
“This is an exceptional thesis and I would like to begin by recommending it for a Vice Chancellor’s award. It is impressively detailed – the critical nuance deployed by the author demonstrates both an impressive knowledge of abstract visual art concepts and related philosophical critical theory. The author has an extraordinary command of critical thinking and combines that with a deep understanding of postmodern art and philosophy. He is also – it must be said – a wonderful writer. That is rare in someone with his intellectual reach and depth. This thesis was a pleasure to read. I have no criticisms – and I say that having read it twice. It is a flawless thesis – beautifully conceived, written and inspiring. It must be published.”
– Professor Catharine Lumby, Macquarie University
‘21C reappears in the actual 21C’
I can’t imagine this thing appearing in any venue other than 21C. That zine was the hairiest Australian magazine in the history of the universe. And now they put the archives online, and they’re trying to pile something on top of that. That’s a genuinely scary crowd. Really, somebody could get hurt.
– Bruce Sterling, Wired, 2010
Transit Lounge
“Unlike other publications of the ‘Information Age,’ 21•C, under the strong editorship of Ashley Crawford, managed to steer clear of the excesses and frequent hyperbole that has accompanied the explosive growth of the Internet and ‘Third Wave’ corporations. The articles in Transit Lounge read like mini research reports from the future, critical in tone, well-crafted, and notably have conscience, and sometimes even dissent. Transit Lounge stands apart from the wealth of by now trendy cyber-crit anthologies by drawing upon the critical voices of diverse specialists and analysts, painting a broad but detailed mosaic of 21st Century culture.”
– Alexander Burns, Amazon.com
“Transit Lounge is a collection of fifty or so of the better stories from the Australian magazine 21•C – which for those unfamiliar with it, is a wonderful publication from somewhere over the rainbow where art, fringe culture, postmodernism and technology meet the future and try to figure out what the hell is going on. It goes where Wired fears to tread, but with more thought and (in my ever-so-humble-opinion) more credibility – if only in that its focus is less on how technology can reshape society and more on how we are reshaping ourselves.”
– Astrid Atkinson, fineArt forum, vol. 12, no. 6, June 1998
Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley
“If ‘academic’ means impenetrable, laboriously written text, the academic, Spray is not. But it does document, logically, Arkley’s artistic and personal development… With its lush illustrations and comprehensive documentation, this edition ensures that it will remain the definitive reference on Arkley’s work.”
– Susan McCulloch-Uehlin, Australian Book Review, April, 2002
First Life
“…a tome of a catalogue with an essay by Ashley Crawford that rivals a
Paul Theroux travel saga.”
– Jane Dwyer, Asia ArtNews
The Art of James Davis
Crawford’s book does an admirable job of unveiling the intention and background of this independent and forceful artist. Paintings that first appeared difficult and abrasive soon become intriguing. Crawford’s clarity allows the works to open up before the reader. Each new page brings another variation, another panel and greater insight into the symbolic work and its relevance to the artist’s unique experience… The Art of James Davis is an excellent guide to his vocabulary.
– Tim Spencer, artsHub
Lines of Fire: Tim Storrier
“Crawford is well respected in the field of art writing and his address of the work is excellent. His dedication to the book is suggested in the last chapter, in which he tells of traveling with Storrier on an artistic mission to Turkey. Crawford’s low-ego critical style is the book’s greatest asset. Unassuming yet authoritative, he provides the reader with different angles on Storrier’s work without indulging in over conceptualising the artist’s rigorous yet subjective study of environment.”
– Jesse McDonald, Artwrite, 2005