Going Back In brings together two painters, Ken Whisson, the celebrated Australian-born artist who lived in Perugia, Italy, from 1977 to 2014, and John Foubister, who works in regional South Australia. A chance encounter in 1984 began a friendship between the singular painter and his younger counterpart, who shared an interest in the shape-shifting line between abstraction and figuration. Edited by Anna Zagala and published alongside an exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art, the book draws together their written correspondence, ephemera, artwork and new writing, with the works of the two artists running through it as two sides of a harmonious painterly conversation across four decades. Hand-scrawled envelopes and early digital video footage place the story in an era, yet it speaks to the value of creative exchange and of friendships that sustain artists. The cover is cream, with a street-scene photograph of a woman at a red postbox beneath a blue arrow sign above a colourful landscape painting.