Contemporary Art: New Books

Featuring chapters by a diverse range of leading international artists and theorists, this book suggests that contemporary art is increasingly characterized by the problem of where and when it is situated. While much advanced artistic speculation of the twentieth-century was aligned with the question "what is art?," a key question for many artists and thinkers in the twenty-first century has become "where is art?" Contributors explore the challenge of meaningfully identifying and evaluating works located across multiple versions and locations in space and time. In doing so, they also seek to find appropriate language and criteria for evaluating forms of art that often straddle other realms of knowledge and activity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, art criticism, and philosophy of art.

This book focuses on the lesser-known details of colonial history, with particular emphasis on stories of resistance and rebellion against colonial rule. The contemporary artists featured in this book include John Akomfrah, La Vaughn Belle, Manthia Diawara, Jeannette Ehlers, Michelle Eistrup, Sasha Huber, Oceana James, Patricia Kaersenhout, Grada Kilomba, Suchitra Mattai, and Alberta Whittle, who are all at the forefront of decolonial thinking. Through their artworks, they convey compelling narratives that shed light on the entangled colonial histories that connect Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. Collectively, these artists provide crucial insight into some of the lesser-known aspects of colonial history, such as Norwegian involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. The artists featured in this book convey unique resistance stories about fearless freedom fighters such as Venus Johannes, Mary Thomas, Olaudah Equiano, and Anna Heegaard, thereby allowing for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of colonial history than the historical narratives that have typically been told from a Western perspective. These are stories of resistance that help, at least partially, to set the historical records straight. By highlighting the stories of those who have been historically silenced, we gain access to a more nuanced understanding of colonial history and the factors which have contributed to the continued effects of colonialism today, most evidently witnessed in the prevalence of racism, poverty, and forced migration.

Introduction -- Part One: Psychoanalytic feminism. Not-forgetting : Mary Kelly's Love songs; inadequacy : Silvia Kolbowski's history of conceptual art; Darkness : the emergence of James Welling; Breaking ground : Barbara Kruger's spatial practice; Louise Lawler's rude museum -- Part Two: Radical democracy. Christopher D'Arcangelo's elliptical interruptions; The art of not being governed quite so much : Hans Haacke's Polls; Art from Guantanamo Bay; Reasonable urbanism -- Part three: War resistance. Un-war : an aesthetic sketch; Museum of innocence; "We don't need another hero" : war and public memory; Lois Lawler's play technique; Mary Kelly's attunement; Martha Rosler's unrest.

In the twenty-first century, photography has come of age as a contemporary art form. Almost two centuries after photographic technology was  first invented, the art world has fully embraced it as a legitimate medium, equal in status to painting and sculpture. The Photograph as Contemporary Art introduces the extraordinary range of contemporary art photography, from portraits of intimate life to highly staged directorial spectacles.

Know My Name brings together a range of works by women and female-identifying artists that shed light on diverse ways of considering the stories of Australian art. While some of the artists are relatively well known, others less so, the publication seeks to retell the dynamics of Australian art through the work of women to find new meanings and possibilities.

Art Basel's official annual publication captures the exhibitions in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong, featuring interviews, portfolios, essays and personal highlights from artists, curators, collectors and museum directors. Furthermore, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Art Basel, this year's volume includes a "polyphonic timeline" providing retrospective insights into the fair's five decades, as well as interviews with 25 art-world luminaries, who share their thoughts about the evolution of the art world.

This open access book includes a series of artworks, each work presents its own set of questions and challenges in the study of a specific contaminated site. Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies is an artist-driven organisation, active since 2009 in Östergötland, Sweden. The center works to create a dynamic meeting place for artists and craft practitioners with a focus on long-term, site-dependent research.

Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical framing, haptics, and layering, this volume takes stock of emerging forms of screen space and spatialities as they move from the margins to the centre of contemporary media practice.

As the cinematic experience becomes subsumed into ubiquitous technologies of seeing, contemporary artworks lift the cinematic from the immateriality of the film screen, separating it into its physical components within the gallery space. How do film theorists read these reformulations of the cinematic medium and their critique of what it is and has been?