Kunsthalle Zurich/Vanabbemuseum, Eindhoven/Institute of Visual Culture, Cambridge/SFMOMA 2003
304 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3883756644
22.5 x 29 cm English text. Hardcover
No Ghost Just a Shell is a project based around the virtual figure AnnLee, on which 16 artists have worked. AnnLee is a ‘Avatar’, a virtual character originally designed for computer games and the Manga animation industry. In 1999 the French artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno bought the rights to her, gave her a name and initiated the project No Ghost Just a Shell. The plan was to fill the empty ‘entity’ AnnLee with stories and ideas and to give her an identity and a life of her own. Huyghe and Parreno offered AnnLee to other artists with the commission: use AnnLee in your own work and at the same time contribute with us to her history.
Artists include: Henry Barande, Liam Gillick, Lily Fleury, Pierre Huyghe, Melik Ohanian, Philippe Parreno, Joe Scanlan, Rikrit Tirvanija and Anna Lena Vaney. Price: £38.00
Les Presses du Réel/Janvier 2001
204 pages Colour reproductions throughout. ISBN 2840660504
20.5 x 26 cm English text. Hardcover
'What are we looking for in the Caribbean? We might as well say: what are we looking for in Venice, Sao Paulo, New York, Paris, London, Belfast, Berlin, all the same... What are we after? The trash and horrors left by the art world? Or the breaking point at which progress turns into raw actuality? Like Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, we journey up the river seeking familiar signs in a darker and darker reality. There's something very comforting, if numbing, in the endless elaboration of a self-sufficient, arcane vocabulary. No matter how far we go, art continues to exist in a world unto itself, a world populated by critics, gallerists, dealers, artists, directors, all speaking their own private language. A world that is highly realized and comely – a kind of managerial sublime.
Every Biennial is a cynical manipulation of consensus. And Blown Away is no exception to this attitude. It works on the structure, exposing the mechanism of any show, revealing its skeleton but taking away all the meat and flesh. As any other show, it's an exploitation of privileges, like virginity once lost; a matter of corruption, if you will. But Blown Away is also an experiment in loss. Twelve artists sharing one hotel, sharing meals, sun and baths, erasing any trace of art, elevating conversation to a virtuoso exercise, as in some painting from the 18th century, with ladies and gents sitting around and chatting the night away on red couches, the window opened on some Arcadian landscape and an ancient roman bust near the fireplace...' Maurizio Cattelan
A project by Maurizio Cattelan with Vanessa Beecroft, Olafur Eliasson, Douglas Gordon, Mariko Mori, Chris Ofili, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Pipilotti Rist, Tobias Reberger, and Rirkrit Tiravanija Price: £29.50
OUT OF STOCK
Kathy High 2002
78 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. No ISBN
15 x 21 cm Emglish text, Softcover Price: £9.95
Flammarion 2002
192 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 2080108735
22 x 20 cm English text. Hardcover
When in 1971 Daniel Buren hung a 65-foot striped canvas in the central well of the New York Guggenheim, Donald Judd referred to him as "a Parisian wallpaper hanger." In 1986, his permanent Two Plateaus installation in the courtyard of Paris's Palais Royal provoked such controversy that the project was almost brought to a standstill. In his consistent questioning of how art is conceived and perceived, Buren has often incited criticism, in the face of which he has maintained a rare integrity and coherence in his work. In this monograph, the only publication currently available on the artist, author Guy Lelong examines the origins, significance, and inherently provocative nature of Buren's art. His analysis underlines one of its most prominent and influential aspects: the deliberate inversion of the relationship art works maintain with the places where they are exhibited. Fully illustrated throughout with Buren's own "photo-souvenirs" of his site-specific works, this volume offers a comprehensive analysis of this artist's work to date. It is published to coincide with a retrospective traveling from the Centre Georges Pompidou to the Guggenheim SoHo in fall 2002. Price: £25.00
Hatje Cantz 2001
114 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3775710051
24 x 30 cm English/German text. Softcover
John Bock, who has made quite a name for himself internationally, primarily works with scenic arrangements. His stage-like walk-in sculptures made from fabrics and junk are the backdrop for opulent semi-theatrical and semi-improvised performances. Rural descent, half-baked philosophies and, above all, references to the Vienna actionists are all integrated into his performances, which are more often than not succinctly called "lectures" by the artist. In his sometimes rather acrobatic entries, Bock blends topic fragments from the sciences, arts and everyday life into a highly explosive mixture focussed around the question of the relationship between art and life, society and the individual. This book of collage-like design traces 12 of John Bock´s "lectures" with an abundance of pictures and texts by the artist who is trying to make sense of the world by creating his own. Price: £19.99
Book Works 2001
200 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 1870699556
21 x 30 cm English text. Softcover
In 2000, as part of the exhibition 'Protest and Survive', Hirschhorn built a bridge linking the Whitechapel Gallery and the Freedom Press Bookshop, which is located adjacent to the Gallery across Angel Alley in the East End of London. During the exhibition the he Freedom Press Bookshop, which was established in 1886 sells and publishes its own books and pamphlets on anarchism, became an extension of the Whitechapel and vice versa.
The book is a fascinating document detailing the ideas behind the work, including interviews with the artist and curators of the work, transcripts of talks given about the Bridge and visitors impressions, as well as numerous official documents, press cuttings and photographs from the artist's own archive. Price: £7.50
The approach 2001
26 pages Colour reproductions throughout. No ISBN
14.5 x 21 cm English text. Softcover
"When Sunna paints, she invariably paints people but she never paints portraits. She paints faces. Instead of the trivia of personality or the accuracy of likeness, Sunna paints featureless faces or faces containing thin traces of anonymous eyes with, perhaps, a perfunctory mouth.
Mostly though, the faces in Sunna's paintings are simply blank. They are not affected or denied, though, and this is hinted at by the the fact that their blankness is not an emptiness or absence, it is creamy and solid... Sunna paints these people blankly so as to make no demands on them to identify themselves, to reveal themselves, to be present for us."
Dave Beech Price: £5.00
Tdm Éditions, Paris 2002
50 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 2912148030
20 x 26 cm Englsih text. Hardcover
Verhoeven is a leading fashion illustrator and regular contributor to Self Service, Dazed & Confused, The Face, the Independent on Saturday, and is the designer for the Spring/Summer 2002 Cacharel fashion show. For her first solo-exhibition she presents 40 lively drawings and painted collages inspired by her favourite pop songs.
Her work is introduced with an up-beat about women music essay by Bethan Cole. Price: £32.00
Film And Video Umbrella 2002
58 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0953863476
18 x 23 cm English text. Softcover Price: £9.95
128 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 1870699564
15.5 x 17 cm English text. Softcover
How do people group together? And what are the methods of containment used in order to regulate the ‘vulgar mob’? In this very timely publication, Mobile Vulgus looks at the tactics used by state forces, in particular, non-lethal weapons and associated training regimes, he traces the move toward total policing. As such methods have developed, so on the other side protest tactics have evolved in order to counteract them. Positioning itself within the counter-tendencies the book then develops its own methodologies of action. Once aligned under a common desire this project reveals the potential force a crowd of people hold when they act as a cohesive whole. At once a textual treatise, a visual manual and an audio tool, Mobile Vulgus has developed out of in-depth research, alongside test situations in Bristol and London. Price: £7.50
