Artists have been experimenting with film and pushing the boundaries of the moving image since the earliest years of the medium. Gaining momentum with the emergence of the expanded cinema movement in the 1960s, and further solidifying with video art in the 1970s, by the start of the new millennium, video art, moving image, and broader screen-based practices had become some of art’s most dominant and influential genres. Today, as we navigate the opportunities and implications of networked technologies and social media, the moving image is at the nexus of the cultural milieu – a key signpost through avant-garde practice, democratised video culture and the creative technologies pushing artistic boundaries.

Among this rich and dynamic cultural space, two Australian institutions have stood out as central pillars of this essential art form. Since 2009, Adelaide’s Samstag Museum of Art – in collaboration with the Adelaide Film Festival – and Melbourne’s ACMI have driven major commissioning programs for new moving image works that have helped both redefine and further locate the medium at the core of Australian and global creative practice. This book, the first of its kind in Australia, not only provides a rich reference and documentation of these crucial moving image commissions, but also provides a series of historical and newly commissioned critical and discursive reflections on both the artistic outputs and the role and history of commissioning practice. Outside the Frame: Art and the Moving Image is a guide to creativity, the artworks, and the institutional armature that underpins the moving image.

Featuring artworks by Lynette Wallworth, Warwick Thornton, Shaun Gladwell, Daniel Crooks, Angelica Mesiti, David Rosetzky, Hossein Valamanesh, Trent Parke and Narelle Autio, Molly Reynolds and Rolf de Heer, Soda Jerk, Zanny Begg, Amos Gebhardt, John Harvey, Jason Phu, Gabriella Hirst, Madison Bycroft, Reko Rennie, and Amrita Hepi; new contextual essays by Kate Warren and Lauren Carroll Harris; a conversation between Anna Zagala, Amos Gebhardt and Jason Phu; and new and republished historical texts by Catherine Wilson, Anna Zagala, Sarah Tutton, Erica Green, Ulanda Blair, Emma McCrae, Fiona Trigg, Hamid Severi, Gideon Haigh, Robert McFarlane, Jessie Scott, Isobel Parker Philip, Adolfo Aranjuez, Jenna Rain Warwick, Chelsey O’Brien, Shelley McSpedden, Kathryn Weir, McKenzie Wark, and Kate ten Buuren.