The Italian Paintings

Bringing together for the first time his acclaimed Italian Paintings, this publication, printed on the occasion of the artist’s presentation during the 2022 Venice Biennale, compiles works exclusively created in Italy and charts the evolution of his stacked, multihued compositions.

It includes works dating to the early 1990s and Whitney’s formative period in Rome, where he would live for five years, to more recent paintings undertaken over summers spent in his studio near Parma.

This title is an expanded second edition of the Serpentine’s 2019 catalogue, which is itself, now out of print.

It documents the expanded scope of the exhibition ‘Faith Ringgold’: a survey exhibition organized by Serpentine Galleries, London and held at Glenstone Museum, Maryland, US.  It includes key examples of Ringgold’s soft sculpture and rare experiments with pure abstraction.

Focusing on different series of paintings, story quilts, and political posters from the 1960s until today, this publication includes two texts by academic Michele Wallace which interweave Ringgold’s biography with the chronology of works in the exhibition.

Out of Frame

This publication accompanies Ikon’s exhibition ‘Abdulrazaq Awofeso: Out of Frame’, (10 June – 29 August 2022), a solo exhibition by Nigerian artist Abdulrazaq Awofeso recently arrived in Birmingham from Lagos.

The exhibition is part of Ikon’s Arrivals programme for Summer 2022, concerned with the international movement of people and ideas and organised to coincide with the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Rope/Fire/Water

“Reigning over them all is Rope/Fire/Water, an overdue survey of Howardena Pindell’s alternating forays into abstract painting and politics…” — The Most Important Moments in Art in 2020, The New York Times

Rope/Fire/Water is about the brutality of racism and the healing power of art by American artist, Howardena Pindell (b.1943, Philadelphia).

This catalogue explores the dichotomy between her work in the exhibition’s titular video, which examines the history of lynching and state- sanctioned violence in the United States, and a selection of abstract and thematic paintings.

Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths. Revisiting the Black Dada Reader

In 2011, American artist Adam Pendleton (b. 1984) assembled Black Dada Reader, a compendium of texts, documents and positions that elucidated a practice and ethos of ‘Black Dada’.

In 2017, Koenig Books published the Reader in a hardcover edition, with newly commissioned essays and additional writings by the artist. A decade later, Pendleton has composed another reader, building upon the constellation of writers, artists, filmmakers, philosophers and critics that emerged in the first volume.

Typhoon Coming On

Sondra Perry constructs multifaceted narratives that explore the imagining, or imaging, of blackness throughout history.

Often taking her own life as a point of departure, she makes works that revolve specifically around black American experiences and the ways in which technology and identities are entangled.

Published on occasion of the exhibition, Sondra Perry: Typhoon Coming On at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (6 March – 20 May 2018).

2000 Words Series

Since the mid-1990s, Chris Ofili’s (born 1968) painstakingly crafted paintings and sculptures have dazzled – and often distressed – viewers with a fusion of opposing forces: sacred meets profane, formal bows to demotic, and exalted bleeds into vulgar.

Conceived by Massimiliano Gioni, the DESTE Foundation’s ‘2000 Words series’ gives insight into the work of some of today’s most exciting contemporary artists through the vantage point of the Dakis Joannou Collection.

Features a critical, forthright essay by Katherine Brinson, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, that explores the inherent dualities in Chris Ofili’s works.

Sandra Mujinga, Paulo Nazareth, Tschabalala Self, Kemang Wa Lehulere

A groundswell of complex events around the globe have made discussion surrounding the Western Eurocentric, often prejudiced notion of ‘Blackness’ even more relevant and controversial in recent years.

This publication aims to show a range of artistic positions that address issues relevant to society, including the complexity of identities, the ambivalence of visibility and transparency, and the repression of history in educational settings, to name just a few.

London / New York

With works spanning over 50 years of the British icon’s career from 1967 to the present day, ‘Frank Bowling – London / New York’ celebrates the ways in which one artist’s inventive approach to the materiality of paint has expanded the boundaries of abstraction.

Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) in 1934, Bowling arrived in London in 1953, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1962. He later divided his time between the art scenes in London and New York, maintaining studios in both cities.

Rich in archival studio shots and with generous photographs of Frank Bowling’s canvases this catalogue offers the reader an intimate insight into the master painter’s creative process.

John Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982. His work is characterised by a rich, multi-layered visual style that is as poetic as it is political and which frequently fuses contemporary issues with history, fiction and mythology.

Collaging archival film footage, still photography and newsreel with new material, he investigates personal and collective memories, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics in works that explore the experience of the African diaspora in Europe and the US.

Jet Black Futures

Keith Piper’s creative practice is research-driven and responds to specific social and political issues, historic relationships and geographical sites.

He was a founder member of the highly influential BLK Art Group in the 1980s and continues to create visually compelling and thought-provoking works of art.

Published on occasion of the exhibition ‘Keith Piper: Jet Black Futures’, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 14 January – 24 April 2022.

A Reimagining of Relations

Jade Montserrat’s (b. 1981, London) publication, A Reimagining of Relations, is part of her Future Collect commission with Iniva and Manchester Art Gallery.

This visually rich artist publication makes material the dialogue and ideas that have shaped Montserrat’s process over the past two years.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, ‘Constellations: Care & Resistance’ at Manchester Art Gallery (5 Nov 2020 – 5 June 2022).

Doublethink

Doublethink presents the first in-depth assessment of the work by the late Donald Rodney.

Employing a wide range of art forms in which self-portraiture and the body are often conduits for wider social and political narratives, Rodney’s art refuses easy categorisation and can be as humorous as it is poignant.

The book also includes a preface by Stuart Hall and newly commissioned essays by Eddie Chambers and Virginia Nimarkoh.

I Came to Dance

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.

“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).

Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes

Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes

Fault Lines brings together artists and writers from Africa and the African diaspora whose works trace the fault lines that are shaping contemporary experience locally and globally.

Published on the occasion of the 50th Venice Biennale, Fault Lines traces a journey from the rousing words of the first presidents of the independent states of Africa to the current ‘states of emergency’ that Stuart Hall discerns in the work of the Fault Lines artists.

Artists: Laylah Ali, Kader Attia, Samta Benyahia, Zarina Bhimji, Frank Bowling, Clifford Charles, Pitso Chinzima, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Hassan Fathy, Veliswa Gwintsa, Moshekwa Langa, Salem Mekuria, Sabah Naim, Moataz Nasr and Wael Shawky.

Published on occasion of the exhibition Fault Lines at the 50th Venice Biennale 2003.

Along a Spectrum

British artist, Veronica Ryan (b. 1956) is best known for her sculpture that is evocative of shapes, forms and objects from the natural world.

Over the years, she has experimented with scale, material and technique while remaining focused on the interplay between conflicting opposites: revelation and concealment, container and contained, absence and presence.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition, ‘Veronica Ryan. Along a Spectrum’ at Spike Island, Bristol (19 May – 5 September 2021).

By the Rivers of Birminam

Vanley Burke has photographed the Jamaican Community in Handsworth since the mid 1960s. His images reveal a great compassion for his own people, expressed in his image of the Africa Liberation Day crowds gathered in Handsworth Park.

This book is published alongside the exhibition of the same name at MAC birmingham (22 September – 18 November 2012). It contextualizes his images through a collage of quotes from the press on the history of immigration to Birmingham.

Migration throws objects, identities and ideas into flux across a global network of travelling cultures. Examining life-changing journeys that transplanted artists and intellectuals from one cultural context to another, Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers offers a thematic overview of the critical and creative role of estrangement and displacement in the story of 20th century art.

Revealing the traumatic conditions that shaped numerous variants of modernism – among indigenous artists in Australia and Canada as much as émigré art historians from Central Europe – these critical studies also highlight multidirectional patterns of cross-appropriation that trouble the settled boundaries of national belonging, whether manifested in 1920s Nigeria or in post-modern works by black British artists of the 1980s.

Published alongside three of Ndiritu’s video works exhibited for the first time at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Projected onto the altar, The Nightingale becomes a powerful installation, in this context, alluding to images of the Madonna that occur in Renaissance paintings. The video explores issues of cultural stereotyping and the disconnection between East and West.

Ndiritu has been nominated for this year’s Jarman Award 2022.

The Upper Room

The Upper Room is an artist’s book which contextualises Chris Ofili’s titular series of thirteen paintings, each a meditation on a single colour and single motif.

This body of work was first exhibited at Victoria Miro in a specially constructed space conceived by the artist and designed in collaboration with the architect David Adjaye.

It has since been purchased by TATE and resides in their collection.

2011 ≠ 1848

Stan Douglas has long explored critical sociocultural and political change.

His exhibition for the 59th Biennale di Venezia, ‘2011 ≠ 1848’, reflects upon the language of protest, revolution and the uprisings witnessed across the globe in 2011.

Douglas’ four large-scale hybrid documentary photographs re-stage protests in Tunis, London, New York and Vancouver, and his two channel HD video, ISDN, presents Grime and Mahraganat rappers exchanging subversive lyrics between studios in London and Cairo.

Kudzanai-Violet Hwami (*1993, Zimbabwe) combines visual fragments in her paintings, revealing a multi-layered and personal vision of life.

She experiments with photographs and digital image collages, using them to create large-scale works on paper or canvas with intensely pigmented oil paint, often employing other media and techniques such as silkscreen, pastel or charcoal.

She draws her inspiration from a variety of sources, including archival, online or nude images, but also personal photographs, such as self-portraits or family pictures.

Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Hamilton, Canada, lives in Paris) traces historical narratives, excavating and considering the global impact of international relationships—including colonialism—in its manifold aspects, and how it permeates contemporary culture.

Unveiling the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing narratives from the past in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities—as in her most exhibited project Flowers for Africa, begun in 2013—her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalized or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance.

Henry Moore Institute Essays on Sculpture: Issue 80

Lungiswa Gqunta’s work looks head on at the painful legacies of colonialism and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Through it, Gqunta illuminates ways of knowing that have so often been discredited by the atrocities of these frameworks.

The spaces she conjures deny the curtailments imposed upon African systems of knowledge by colonial conquests. From them, new – and ancient – libraries of information emerge to be shared and invested in.

The eightieth edition of the Henry Moore Institute’s Essays on Sculpture series is published to accompany the exhibition ‘Lungiswa Gqunta: Sleep in Witness’.