Published posthumously two years after Ailsa O’Connor’s death, Unfinished Work gathers articles, talks and notes from one of Melbourne’s more politically committed twentieth-century artists.

O’Connor writes from inside the overlapping worlds of socialist politics, feminism and art-making, paying particular attention to the problem of what politically serious art might actually look.

The book moves between autobiography, Australian art history, realism, socialist aesthetics, women artists, cultural politics and O’Connor’s encounters with figures including Käthe Kollwitz and Tina Wentcher. There is a recurring suspicion of both institutional art culture and crude political prescription. O’Connor wants art capable of confronting material conditions without becoming merely illustrative of an ideology. Her essays on women and art are especially interesting as documents of Australian second-wave feminism, while the more personal sections give the collection the quality of an intellectual autobiography assembled after the fact. Illustrated throughout with photographs and reproductions of sculpture and drawings. Contemporary accounts have described the collection as an unusually rich source on art, women and politics in Australia. 

Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, Victoria, 1982. First edition. Paperback. 239 pages, illustrated in black and white. Light rubbing and edge wear to covers, most noticeable along spine and corners; internally clean and well preserved, binding firm. Very good condition.