Publisher: Cobyork Ltd t/a Sydney Gay Community Publishing, Darlinghurst, NSW.

Format: Three newspaper issues, 28–52pp, 43.5 x 29cm.

Issues are: No. 142, October 1990. No. 197, November 1992. No. 202, February 1993.

Founded as The Sydney Star in 1979 as “a contribution to the building of the gay movement and the growth of gay consciousness”, it was renamed the Sydney Star Observer in 1987 and became the political voice of Sydney’s LGBT community.

The Sydney Star Observer doubled its circulation from 9,427 in 1990 to 19,603 in 1993, as the AIDS crisis in Australia deepened, and pages became dedicated in memoriam sections.

The publication still exists today as the Star Observer and continues to function as an arm of political activism, party notifier, and observer of modern LGBT living.

Minor discolouration or tears to lower edge.

Publisher: The Sydney Star, Sydney.

Format: Fourteen newspaper issues, 16pp each, 42.5 x 29cm.

Issues included are: 1980–1981: Volume 2, numbers 1, 22, 24. 1981–1982: Volume 3, numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 17, 18, 21, 22. 1983: Volume 4, number 14.

The Sydney Star, later The Star, was launched in 1979 by Michael Glynn (1948–1996), an American who came to Sydney and developed the ethos ‘think gay, buy gay.’ Issues were published fortnightly as “a contribution to the building of the gay movement and the growth of gay consciousness.”

The paper became a gay business entertainment guide – covering parties, bath house events, and Mardi Gras – as well as a rallying political advocate and voice of the community when LGBT people were being actively pursued by the police pre-decriminalisation in 1984.

The Star covered issues such as police conduct at gay venues along Oxford Street, including raids and bashings by police officers (evidence later used by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission for an inquiry into the misconduct of police along Oxford Street); the campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in New South Wales, which was enacted on May 22, 1984; and the then spate of unsolved gay murders in Sydney, including that of Peter Parkes.

These issues fall three months short of the AIDS crisis taking hold in Australia, illustrating a “golden age of the gay/lesbian print media.” The first reported case of AIDS in Australia was published in the May 1983 issue of The Star. The last issue in this collection is dated February 11, 1983.

Michael Glynn died of AIDS-related complications in 1996, but the publication he founded still exists today as the Star Observer. His photographic archive is held with the City of Sydney.

Ref: Dominic O’Grady, Preaching to the Perverted: the life and times of Michael Glynn, 2013.

Minor tears to some edges.

Publisher: UBU Publications, Darlinghurst and Redfern, NSW.

Format: Four newspaper issues, ranging from 4pp to 16pp, 44 x 29cm.

Ubunews was formed from the UBU Films co-operative, Australia’s first self-consciously avant-garde film group founded by three Sydney University students: Albie Thoms, Aggy Read, and David Perry. It was the first ‘underground’ paper in Australia after OZ magazine folded.

UBU Films instigated an extensive network of Australia’s underground activity at a time when Australia’s cultural and political landscape was in transition, and the film group used Ubunews as “a propaganda sheet for the underground, & a weapon in UBU’s fight against censorship.”

The newsletter-come-magazine ran for only 16 issues, from 1968 to 1970. Their pages included upcoming film screenings and events, often involving UBU’s “lightshows”, record and film reviews, ads drawn by in-house artists, poster sheets, and guest columns.

Highlights –

No. 12: Underground music boom, showcasing Tully; history of UBU; catalogue of Sydney film-makers co-operative; a column by Timoth Leary.

No. 13: cover art by Martin Sharp; Canned Heat; Pact Theatre; Yoko Ononism, screenprint poster of Bob Hite [Canned Heat singer], screenprint poster for the Australian screening of Jonas Mekas’ The Brig; a description of UBU’s psychedelic lightshows.

No. 14: Nakedness nudity & raw flesh in underground movies; Peter Powditch; Len Lye; fashion poem by Robin Spence.

No. 15: Defeat Censorship; Thoms’ film Marinetti, Hair the musical.

Full set held in NLA.

Some minor tears to old folds, minor foxing to a few pages.

Publisher: Simone Bouchez, Paris.

Format: Seven softcover magazines, staple bound, unpaginated [approx. 50pp each], 27 x 18cm.

Issues included are:

No. 14, October 1932 No. 15, November 1932 No. 16, December 1932 No. 23, July 1933 No. 24, August 1933 No. 31, March 1934 No. 35, July 1934

Paris Magazine was a monthly erotica magazine published in Paris during the 1930s and 1940s. It featured photographers such as Man Ray, Bertram Park, and Brassai, alongside fiction, illustrations, and celebrity features such as with Mae West. Ads for beauty products such as “Tho-Radia”, a radium brightening cream for women, were published alongside the photographs.

Two issues missing a plate. Slight foxing and creases overall.

Publisher: Henri Francois, Paris.

Format: Pair of softcover magazine, staple bound, unpaginated [approx. 50pp each], 25 x 19.8cm.

Issues are No. 11, 1934, and New Series [post-war], No. 8, 1950. Several full-page nudes. Text in French.

Paris Sex-Appeal was a monthly erotica magazine published in Paris between 1930–1939, pausing for the war, then resuming in 1950 before ceasing publication in 1951.

One issue missing one colour plate. Slight foxing and creases overall.

Publisher: Ure Smith, Sydney [1963 to 1975], and The Fine Arts Press, Sydney [1976 to 1999].

Format: 147 glossy wrapper magazines, between 72pp and 436pp, 24.3 x 22.5cm.

A near-complete run to 1999 of Art and Australia, the successor to the fine art magazine Art in Australia published by Sydney Ure Smith between 1916 and 1942. The magazine was reborn as Art and Australia under Ure Smith’s son, Sam Ure Smith, in 1963.

Art Historian Joanna Mendelssohn considered Art and Australia “the most significant continuing publication on Australian art. It has often been the first published source of information and research on Australian artists, and has a long-standing practice of reviewing books on Australian art and major exhibitions.”

This collection comprises Volume 1, Issue 1, through to Volume 36, Issue 3. Most volumes contain a full run of issues: 1 to 4.

Also included is the catalogue publication from 1983 which documents the first one hundred issues; the official Index to the volumes, embracing 40 issues published from May 1963 to April 1973; and three supplement issues of Art & Asia Pacific, which was launched in 1993.

A detailed list of volumes and issues is available on request.

Some scuffing, creases or discolouation. Volume 10 Issue 1 is a proof issue. Overall very good.

Author: Ure Smith, Sydney; and Gellert, Leon (eds).

Publisher: Art in Australia Ltd, Sydney.

Format: Softcover octavo magazine, blue card card wrappers, unpaginated, 25 x 18.5cm.

Contains seven reproduction woodcuts by Margaret Preston, including Circular Quay; eight tipped-in colour plates, and several black & white illustrations by the likes of Blamire Young, Joan Lindsay, Elioth Gruner, and Vida Lahey.

Backstrip curling at heads, slight discolouration, chips and stains to wrappers, some foxing throughout.

Author: Ure Smith, Sydney; and Gellert, Leon (eds).

Publisher: Art in Australia Ltd, Sydney.

Format: Softcover octavo magazine, natural card wrappers, unpaginated, 25 x 18.5cm.

Contains nine tipped-in plates [frontispiece inclusive] and 63 illustrated plates of etchings from the like of Lionel Lindsay, Sydney Long, Sydney Ure Smith, Squire Morgan, E. Blampied, Will Ashton, and B.E. Minns.

Backstrip curling at heads, minor chips and stains to wrappers, missing tipped-in ad for David Jones department store in prelim pages.

Publisher: aComment Publication, Victoria.

Format: Three softcover octavo booklets, staple bound, between 12pp and 39pp each, 23 x 17.5cm to 23.7 x 18.1cm.

• Tails Up, c1941. Stories and poems by Slyvia Green and Eila Green. Edited by Cecily Crozier with linocuts by Irvine Green, 39pp. Children’s stories by Cecily Crozier’s cousins Sylvia and Eila, illustrated with linocuts throughout.
• Childs Journey and Obsequies in Grisailles, Poetry by Arthur Ashworth, illustrations by Irvine Green, 12pp. A long poem by modernist Arthur Ashworth that parodies “traditional fairy tales and nursery rhymes to conjure the grim reality of childhood in wartime, when children carried gas masks and slept to the sound of sirens and whistling bombs.” Ref: MCA.
• Plain Talk on Ulysses (James Joyce) by L’homme qui Rit, A treatise on Ulysses by Louis Thomas Dimes (pen name Tom Dimes), edited by Cecily Crozier, 19pp.

Minor crinkles and light marks to wrappers overall. ‘Plain Talk’ with some soiling, creases, and missing portions to lower right corner.

Author: Crozier, Cecily (ed.)

Publisher: aComment Publication, Victoria.

Format: Fourteen softcover octavo magazines, staple bound, many issues signed by a few contributors, between 12pp and 32pp each, 24 x 18cm.

Cecily Crozier’s Comment, later aComment, was a neo-bohemian magazine of art, poetry, and social literature, that launched in 1940 alongside the commencement of WWII and ran for 26 issues until 1947. It appeared one month before its better known contemporary, Angry Penguins, with which it shared many of its contributors, and which it outlived by a year.

aComment magazine printed modernist poetry and avant-garde ideas that were “free from the traditional pruderies, it has vigour and courage” (letter from a reader, no. 3) and always contained contributions from women. Printed on brown paper due to shortage from the war, it featured bold linocut covers and illustration dotted throughout, often by Cecily’s cousin and then-husband Irvine Green.

Contributors included James Gleeson, Robin Boyd, Max Harris, Alister Kershaw, James Pickering, Frances Brabazon, Nutter Buzzacott, Eric Thake, Gavin Greenlees [lover of Rosaleen Norton], Arthur Ashworth, Elizabeth Galloway, Lola van Gooch, Mary Williams, and Cecily’s cousin Sylvia M. Green.

Several of these issues contain signatures of contributors Max Harris, Alister Kershaw, and James Gleeson (who distributed the magazine in Sydney) alongside their pieces.

This group contains 15 (one being a double issue) of the 26 issues of Comment, all printed by the Bradley Printers in Malvern, Victoria. All contain the tipped-in plates that were printed with the magazine, such as Picasso’s Guernica and Irvine Green’s surreal portrait of Cecily Crozier (Australian, 1911–2006).

Issues are

• 3, Christmas 1940
• 6, July 1941
• 7, September 1941
• 8, November 1941
• 9-10 [double issue], January 1942
• 11, April 1942
• 12, July 1942
• 13, October 1942
• 14, January 1943
• 18, January 1944
• 20, July 1944
• 24, Autumn 1946
• 25, Spring 1946
• 26, Winter 1947.

Held in NGA, NLA, SLV.

A detailed list is available upon request.

Three issues with loose wrappers. Slight creases and crinkles overall, minor chips to some edges, one with soiling to cover. Generally good.