Review of the Year 2024: Editorial Team Picks

This year, projects developing cultural archives certainly captured our attention. Whether on a large scale like Mo’min Swaitat’s Palestinian Sound Archive or the V&A’s queer history of photography, or in smaller, more personal collections like Perimeter Books’Autophoto: A Life in Portraits (of the most photographed man in Australia). These incredible preservations of people and places have been some of our more touching discoveries.

On the photography front, we’ve been pulled in by image-makers exploring subjects closest to them. In Alexander Coggin’s case, his husband (or long-suffering muse); and as for Ana Flores’ visual world, image-making has quickly become an essential, and very touching tool to connect with her Peruvian roots.

Some of us in the team have been loving chasing a bit of fun with the Otherwhere Collective’s Poly Mono ‘game font’ and diving into the wonderfully unexpected world of The Bird of a Thousand Voices – an illustrated game bringing Armenian Folklore into the digital age. Others, however, have taken great satisfaction from the intricately ordered work of artist Daria Chernyshova and some snippets from Taku Inomata’s tidy paper crafts.

A few things we’ve all taken comfort in illustration-wise are Huilin Gui’s cosy scenes, Anna-Laura Sullivan’s adorable watercolour comics, and Maria Szakats’ woollen paintings — all of which have left us with this warm fuzzy feeling inside.