Tessa Laird is Lecturer in Critical and Theoretical Studies at the School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her books include Bat, (2018) a cultural history of bats as part of Reaktion’s celebrated Animal series; A Rainbow Reader, a fictocritical exploration of colour theory (Clouds, 2013); and Nights of Our Lives, an edited compendium of artist’s dreams about art (RM, 2006). Tessa was a respected New Zealand art critic for over twenty years, where she co-founded and edited two important art magazines in the 1990s, Monica Reviews Art and LOG Illustrated. She wrote regular reviews for The New Zealand Listener, Art New Zealand, Art and Australia, and numerous catalogue essays, book chapters and journal articles. Recent writing projects have focused on the animal turn and the botanical turn in contemporary art practices, and include contributions to Más allá del fin, Garland, Artlink, Senses of Cinema, and Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Tessa was the editor of Art + Australia Online from 2016-2019, and is currently editing a special issue of the journal on the theme Multinaturalism.
