This monograph explores the groundbreaking work of Wangechi Mutu, a renowned Kenyan-American artist known for her unique blend of cultural influences and innovative techniques. It delves into her artistic journey, examining themes of identity, gender, and the African diaspora, while highlighting her impactful contributions to contemporary art. The book showcases a range of her works, providing insights into her creative process and the significance of her art in addressing social and political issues.
The first major publication to explore the work of Sonia Boyce, one of
Britain's most exciting contemporary artists, including her newest and most
ambitious work to date
Commercial cinema has been among the most powerful vectors of social and aesthetic modernization in South Asia. So argues Iftikhar Dadi in his provocative examination of cinema produced between 1956 and 1969?the long sixties?in Lahore, Pakistan, following the 1947 Partition of South Asia. These films drew freely from Bengali performance traditions, Hindu mythology, Parsi theater, Sufi conceptions of the self, Urdu lyric poetry, and Hollywood musicals, bringing these traditions into dialogue with melodrama and neorealism. Examining this layered context offers insights into a period of rapid modernization and into cultural affiliation in the South Asian present, when frameworks of multiplicity and plurality are in jeopardy. Lahore Cinema probes the role of language, rhetoric, lyric, and form in the making of cinematic meaning as well as the relevance of the Urdu cultural universe to midcentury Bombay filmmaking. Challenging the assumption of popular cinema as apolitical, Dadi explores how films allowed their audiences to navigate an accelerating modernity and tense politics by anchoring social change across the terrain of deeper cultural imaginaries. By constituting publics beyond social divides of regional, ethnic, and sectarian affiliations, commercial cinema played an influential progressive role during the mid- and later twentieth century in South Asia.
A triumphant illustrated volume on the art of abstract sculptor Ruth Asawa, examining her contributions to modern art and education. Ruth Asawa is an artist of vital importance to modern art. Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe, which accompanies the first public exhibition of Asawa’s work in Europe, introduces readers to Asawa’s work, including her signature hanging sculptures in looped and tied wire, and her pioneering education practice. It positions her expansive ethos—her self-identification as “a citizen of the universe” and belief that art education can be life enriching for everyone—as a catalyst for creative forward-thinking in the twenty-first century. Focusing on a dynamic and formative period in her life from 1945 to 1980, this book gives readers a unique experience of the artist and her work, exploring her legacy and positioning her as an abstract sculptor crucial to American modernism. It is a wonderful celebration of her holistic integration of art, education, and community engagement, through which she called for a revolutionary and inclusive vision of art’s role in society.
Recounts the history of Nashville's black communities through the story of its
hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city,
through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.
Anchored in artistic practice, this vibrant collection of essays and writings spans a period from 1992-2017 and the work of leading artists such as Adel Abdessemed, Richard Avedon, Sonia Boyce, Frank Bowling, Omer Fast, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Alfredo Jaar, Glenn Ligon and Shen Yuan. A key figure in British and international art, Gilane Tawadros draws difference to the surface, recuperating it as a potentially radical frame through which to understand contemporary art and the everyday world. Playing with forms of writing, from critical analyses to fictional narratives, the book functions as a practice-based meditation on how to write about contemporary art
Just as punk created a space for bands such as the Slits and Poly Styrene to challenge 1970s norms of femininity, through a transgressive, strident new female-ness, it also provoked experimental feminist film makers to initiate a parallel, lens-based challenge to patriarchal modes of film making. In this book, Rachel Garfield breaks new ground in exploring the rebellious, feminist punk audio-visual culture of the 1970s, tracing its roots and its legacies. In their filmmaking and their performed personae, film and video artists such as Vivienne Dick, Sandra Lahire, Betzy Bromberg, Ruth Novaczek, Sadie Benning, Leslie Thornton, Abigail Child and Anne Robinson offered a powerful, deliberately awkward alternative to hegemonic conformist femininity, creating a new “punk audio visual aesthetic”. A vital aspect of our vibrant contemporary digital audio visual culture, Garfield argues, can be traced back to the techniques and forms of these feminist pioneers, who like their musical contemporaries worked in a pre-digital, analogue modality that nevertheless influenced the emergent digital audio visual culture of the 1990s and 2000s.
One of the most arresting figurative artists working in Britain today, Claudette Johnson (b. 1959, Manchester, UK) creates larger than life studies of black women that are both intimate and powerful.Modern Art Oxford's major show of her work is the artist's first major institutional exhibition in almost three decades and included approximately 30 paintings and drawings in pastel, paint, ink and charcoal from the early 1980s to 2019.Throughout her career, Johnson has continued to redefine the space assigned to images of black women. Musing that "it is a very small twisted space that is offered", Johnson invites her sitters to "Take up space in a way that is reflective of who they are."The texts in this exhibition catalogue offer fresh insights into her practice and the dynamic impact of her event at the First National Black Arts Convention organised by the BLK Art Group in Wolverhampton, 1982. Also included is an interview with Johnson and archival materials.Claudette Johnson's work is rooted in her African heritage. Her talent is as powerful as it is obvious. -- Steve McQueen (1992)Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Claudette Johnson: I Came to Dance at Modern Art Oxford (1 June - 8 September 2019).
The birth of the SPACE artist initiative in London, 1968 coincided with student protests and autonomous interventions in cities across Europe. Asserting the rights to space was a theme common to student sit-ins, squatting and free festivals. The unique contribution made by SPACE to the city is that artist founders Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgley negotiated vast amounts of space for creativity through legitimate means. They persuaded authorities and landlords to lease them property to which the artists brought new life and creative uses. Many have subsequently benefitted from the example set. This timely book celebrates the contribution of this artist-run initiative to London. The focus is on 1968-75, when SPACE and its sister organisation AIR came into fruition, a period which has much influence for artists and policy today. The story of SPACE is relevant to artists in cities across the world who face challenges of working in ever-more expensive and congested cities. Essays by artists Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgley, plus Mel Dodd, Will Fowler, Larne Abse Gogarty, Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, Robert Kudielka, Courtney J. Martin, Alicia Miller, David Morris, Neil Mulholland, Naomi Pearce, Ana Torok and Andrew Wilson. Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Archive display at SPACE HQ, London (January - March 2018). -- Publisher's website.
Full-time FindingJoy.net blogger, speaker, marketer, podcaster, and single mom
of seven, Rachel Martin presents a pivotal book for moms to spark the hope
they need to overcome self-doubt, fear, pressure, and isolation.
