The titles that bind

Visual arts publishing in Australia has not kept up with the growth of the art world, she says. She and daughter Emily McCulloch Childs, who joined the company as co-director five years ago, want to change that.

This year their output has been relentless. They have released four books: the latest edition of Contemporary Aboriginal Art: The Complete Guide; The Heart of Everything, on the art and artists of Mornington and Bentinck islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria; McCulloch's Encyclopedia Australian Art Diary 2009; and Emily McCulloch Childs' first solo production, New Beginnings: Classic Paintings from the Corrigan Collection of 21st Century Aboriginal Art.

In another win for the family firm, international art publishers Thames and Hudson UK will begin distributing their titles next year.

People often remark on the ability of mother and daughter to work together, but this filial closeness runs in the family. Susan McCulloch was 14 when she typed the catalogue for an exhibition on Aboriginal barks that her father Alan was curating at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.