Image: Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
Monash University Museum of Art will launch a new annual publication series, 'Outbound: Essays in Circulation', on Thursday 17 September with a free evening event at MUMA in Caulfield East, Melbourne. The first volume, 'Speculative Ecology', will be introduced by philosopher Claire Colebrook, who will also give a lecture tied to the publication’s themes.
According to MUMA and Monash University Publishing, 'Outbound: Essays in Circulation' is an ideas-led series developed in conversation with exhibitions. Each volume begins with an exhibition and moves outward into broader social, cultural, political and philosophical questions. The series is co-published by MUMA and Perimeter Editions, and is intended to create space for forms of research and writing that extend beyond the interpretive and documentary roles often associated with exhibition publishing.
The launch event is linked to the publication’s first title, 'Speculative Ecology: The Challenge of Aesthetics in an Era of Fundamentalism', a new essay by Colebrook. The text reopens ecology as a speculative question and challenges the assumption that nature, environment and humanity provide self-evident foundations for politics and ethics. In the publication description, Colebrook argues against contemporary forms of ecological and political fundamentalism, and for worlds in which identities, environments and futures remain open to transformation.
MUMA says the volume is produced in dialogue with the exhibition 'Syncretic Wilds: Phasmahammer and Natasha Tontey', which is currently listed on the museum’s website with dates of 18 July to 19 September 2026. The publication is also described as taking MUMA’s exhibitions as points of departure for wider debate, with a focus on perspectives and conditions in Australia and the Asia-Pacific.
The launch will run from 6–8pm on Thursday 17 September 2026 at MUMA, Ground Floor, Building F, Monash University, Caulfield Campus, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East. Event listings describe it as a free in-person event. The publication is available through the Monash University shop, where it is listed at $35 and described as a 104-page softcover book in black and white.
MUMA’s launch announcement follows another publication event in the same newsletter, '50 Years/50 Works: A MUMA Collection Index', which is scheduled for Saturday 5 September. That separate release is co-published by MUMA and Monash University Publishing and gathers 50 works from the museum’s collection alongside 50 newly commissioned responses. For 'Outbound: Essays in Circulation', the museum is presenting the new series as an annual platform for essays developed alongside exhibition projects, with Colebrook’s lecture marking the debut of volume one.
