This fifth issue of Dialogue, the journal produced by Melbourne’s West Space, is devoted to “fictions”, fictions used as strategy within contemporary visual art.

Guest edited by Ryszard Dabek, with Brett Jones as managing editor and design by Sarah Stubbs, the issue gathers writing and image-making that messes up the border between document, autobiography, criticism and invention.

Every work in the issue uses confusion somewhere, contaminating documentary material with the spurious and asking what happens when artists borrow narrative devices from novels, cinema, television, photography and everyday memory. Across its pages are altered histories, travel accounts, personal narratives, found material, photographs, graphic interventions and reflections on the construction of subjectivity. One essay considers “personal cinema” through chronology, memory and the languages of film and television; elsewhere Dorothea Lange becomes a way into questions of photography, representation and who gets to narrate another person’s life.

West Space began publishing the journal in 1996 as part of the intellectual culture around Melbourne’s artist-run scene, explicitly creating a place for artists to write about practice and the structures surrounding art. Only thirteen issues appeared between 1996 and 2000. Contemporary accounts describe Dialogue as one of the publications helping independent galleries generate critical discussion beyond conventional institutions.

West Space Inc., Footscray, Victoria, March 1997. No. 5. Guest editor Ryszard Dabek; managing editor Brett Jones; design Sarah Stubbs. Edition of 400 copies. Stapled / softcover artist journal. Light shelf wear and handling to covers; internally clean and well preserved. Very good condition.