Art Mania: Kitty Hauser in conversation with Paul Daley
From City of Sydney · Last checked 14 Nov. That's our last look, not a live ticket check.
Event details may change. Confirm times, availability and prices with the organiser before attending.
The lowdown
Join acclaimed author and scholar Kitty Hauser in conversation with multi-award-winning journalist and author Paul Daley, as she discusses her innovative biography Art Mania: Geoffrey Bardon and the Painting Men of Papunya.
Wrote Daley in his recent feature on the book in Guardian Australia, ‘Hauser has examined the extensive private Bardon archive held by Geoff’s widow, Dorn, to produce a multi-layered book about intercultural agency and theft, who gets to tell whose stories and how a template of white saviour/hero mythology has long formed a narrative opacity – a sort of settler state cataract – over the Papunya art story... Art Mania brings compelling new perspectives and nuance to the life of Geoffrey Bardon, who ultimately emerges as neither sinner nor saint, rather as complex and pained for whatever may have happened at Papunya.’ Read more.
This event is held at Rose Read Bookshop in Summer Hill, NSW. Light refreshments provided, bookings essential.
Kitty Hauser is a British-born writer and historian based in Sydney, interested in innovative ways of doing history and writing lives using text, images and archives. Her books include Shadow Sites; Bloody Old Britain: O.G.S. Crawford and the Archaeology of Modern Life; and This Is Bacon. Her writing has been published in the London Review of Books, ArtForum, New Left Review and Granta. Her biography Art Mania: Geoffrey Bardon and the Painting Men of Papunya will be published by Giramondo in November 2026.
Paul Daley is a multi-award-winning journalist and an author of novels and non-fiction books. He has been a finalist in major Australian literary awards including the Prime Minister’s History Prize and the NIB Award, and the collaborative winner of the New South Wales Premier’s History Award. He is a multi-Walkley Award-winning feature writer and columnist for The Guardian where he largely writes about national identity, history and Indigenous issues. His most recent novel is The Leap (Summit Books, 2025), a critically-praised literary thriller about Australian frontier violence and its legacies.
Where to rock up
The Rose Read Bookshop, Summer Hill, Sydney
