ArtAsiaPacific’s 2009 Almanac is out (LINK). It is enormous, covering a dizzying amount of terrain across its 250 odd pages (including a very interesting and ambitious essay by Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa on the insistent gaze towards nature which arose during the late 00′s).

Late last year i spent six weeks researching the artistic output of Australia and New Zealand in 2009 for the Almanac; two separate review pieces compressing a years worth of contemporary art policy, funding, exhibitions, fairs, museum shows, and controversy into eight pages. The image above is the first page of the New Zealand review. Some of the people i researched were very confusing and I am going to talk about those people over the next few days in an attempt to validate that confusion.