Through a series of essays, Erika Esau shows the aesthetic connection she dubs a modern “Pacific Rim” style.
A born and bred Californian, author Erika Esau moved to Australia in the 1990s for an arts teaching position. Through her work, she soon discovered an aesthetic correlation between her new home and her old home. One image in particular – a 1930 tourism poster for Canberra – contained the same sweeping vista and romanticized red-roofed buildings she’d seen on a 1925 Californian citrus-box label.
Through a series of essays, Esau shows the aesthetic connection she dubs a modern “Pacific Rim” style, mostly seen in illustrated magazines. What emerges is a lucid picture of how much Australia and California have interacted with and influenced each other over the last 150 years.
Erika Esau, Power Publications, 2010, pp 368, rrp $59.95.
