The Lip Anthology an Australian Feminist Arts Journal, 1976-1984

By reviewing the adventurous projects and artworks of a significant group of women involved with the LIP Collective based in Melbourne in the 1970s and 80s, this exciting anthology co-published by Kunstverein Publishing Amsterdam and Macmillan Art Publishing: Melbourne discloses for the first time the scope of the movement.

It published Lip: A Feminist Arts Journal; the Earthworks Poster Collective; The Women s Theatre Group; The Women s Film Group and a host of exhibitions and critical writings connecting Australian women artists with the activities of their counterparts overseas. Among the many contributors are Janine Burke, Annette Blonski, Suzanne Davies, Helen Grace, Ponch Hawkes, Sue Johnston, Laleen Jayamanne, Suzanne Spunner and Ann Stephen.

As editor Vivian Ziherl writers: Lip magazine was self-published by women in Melbourne from 1976 to 1984 and stood as a lightning rod for Australian feminist artistic practice over the Women Liberation era. The art and ideas expressed over Lip s lifetime track, with ground-breaking moves into performance, ecology, social-engagement and labor politics, stood at an intersection with local realities.

The Lip Anthology seeks a figuration of Lip as a composite feminist entity produced with relation to the situational conditions of its production. The anthology selection is not proposed as a best of, but rather as cumulative array of materials indicating the range and dynamism of the Lip project.

The diversity of the periodical is privileged across multiple disciplinary vantages, as well as among the varied feminist positions brought together through the discursive space afforded by Lip. Collecting and presenting the materials of Lip for the first time since their original appearance, the anthology seeks (re/de)construction and routes of (re)circulation towards points of (re)commencement.”