Robert Hunter
Published by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2018, 136 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 29.5 × 24.5 cm, English
Price: €90 (Out of stock)

Robert Hunter was arguably Australia’s pre-eminent Minimalist painter. In 1968, at age twenty-one, he was the youngest artist represented in The Field, the inaugural and now-legendary exhibition at the new National Gallery of Victoria, which announced the arrival of late modernist abstraction in the Australian context. Hunter was also one of very few Australian artists to participate in an international art movement, exhibiting in Eight Contemporary Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1974, and continuing to be involved in significant exhibitions in Australia and internationally throughout his career.

This publication, which is now unfortunately out of print, surveys Hunter’s unswerving commitment to a singular aesthetic position, evident in his earliest white-on-white paintings through to the mature works for which he is best known. Robert Hunter contains more than forty colour illustrations as well as essays by Jane Devery, Tom Nicholson, Ann Stephen and Jennifer Winkworth.

#2018 #roberthunter
Mutlu Çerkez: 1988–2065
Published by MUMA (Monash University Art Museum), Melbourne, 2018, 16 pages (b/w ill.), 29.7 × 21 cm, English
Price: €2 (Out of stock)

Exhibition guide produced to accompany Mutlu Çerkez: 1988–2065, an exhibition that surveyed the art and life of Mutlu Çerkez, the Turkish Cypriot Australian artist who lived and worked in Melbourne until his death in 2005 at MUMA (Monash University Art Museum), Melbourne.

Çerkez was an influential artist who, during his lifetime, had a significant impact on the Australian and international art worlds. His work incorporated traditions of conceptual art, minimalism and monochrome painting but made its own internal logic its primary reference point while strenuously resisting a reduction to any single style.

His practice explored its own temporality and sought to create a conversation between past actions and future scenarios. Each new work was ascribed a future date on which he intended to remake the work. Working in a range of mediums including printmaking, painting and sculptural installations, Çerkez employed abstract designs and aphoristic symbols to expound upon time and reality and build upon the conversation between past actions and future scenarios. In 2005, Çerkez passed away in his Melbourne home.

#2018 #muma #mutlucerkez
Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective
Jonas Staal
Published by Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, 2018, 96 pages, (colour ill.), 23 × 12.6 cm cm, English
Price: €15

This publication accompanies the eponymous exhibition project by artist Jonas Staal that offers an overview of the artistic, cultural, and political work of Stephen K. Bannon, best known as campaign manager and advisor for US President Donald Trump. Less well known is Bannon’s work as a filmmaker. Between 2004 and 2016 he directed nine documentary films in a style he has termed “kinetic cinema”. Together they sketch a grim profile of a world on the brink of disaster, beset by economic crisis, secular hedonism, and Islamic fundamentalism. The book deconstructs the mechanisms of propaganda, showing how Trumpism was decades in the making through Bannon’s work.

#2018 #jonasstaal
WORPSWEDER LANDSCHAFT: MODELLBUCH PROTOTYPE COMPROMISED
Christopher Williams
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2018, 72 pages (1 colour ill.), 9.6 × 14.8 cm, English / German
Price: €7

This book, in the tradition of the famous Reclam book series, documents Christopher Williams’ contribution to the exhibition We Call It Ludwig. The Museum Is Turning 40!. With a text by Christopher Williams.

#2018 #christopherwilliams #museumludwig #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
SECESSION
Christopher Williams
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2005/06, 96 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 29.5 cm, English / German
Price: €45 (Out of stock)

Christopher Williams precise photographs retain in a paradoxical way what is in the process of vanishing. His photographs, influenced by the advertising aesthetics of the 1960s or 70s tend to become as anachronistic as their motifs. Published as the second volume of the De Rijke / De Rooij catalogue on the occasion of their exhibition at the Vienna Secession, the two volumes are, however, independently conceptualized artist`s books.

#2005 #2006 #christopherwilliams #secession #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
Horses
Yng­ve Ho­len
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2018, 48 pages (colour ill.), clothbound hard cover, 22 × 33 cm, English / German
Price: €25

Produced on the occasion of Yng­ve Ho­len Horses, 1 September–16 September 2018, Kunsthalle Düssseldorf.

The star­ting point of the se­ries Ro­se Pain­ting is the rims of fi­ve dif­fe­rent SUV mo­dels. Their iso­la­ted cores we­re 3D scan­ned, sca­led to a dia­me­ter of two me­ters, and mil­led in cross-la­mi­na­ted tim­ber. The shift in si­ze and chan­ge of ma­te­ri­als, from alu­mi­num to wood, makes the works re­call the wa­gon wheels of his­to­ri­cal hor­se-drawn car­ria­ges or sta­ge­coa­ches. In their de­li­be­ra­te non-func­tio­na­li­ty, they par­ti­cu­lar­ly em­pha­si­ze the or­na­men­tal qua­li­ty and point to an en­t­i­re spec­trum of con­cen­tri­cal­ly de­si­gned ele­ments, from the ro­se pain­ting style to the Go­t­hic ro­se win­dow.

To­ge­ther wi­th the Ja­pa­ne­se pho­to­gra­pher Sa­to­shi Fu­ji­wa­ra (*1984 in Ko­be, Ja­pan, li­ves and works in Ber­lin), Ho­len has pro­du­ced an ar­tist’s book for the ex­hi­bi­ti­on. In it, Ho­len and Fu­ji­wa­ra, who is known for his ex­tre­me clo­seups and sen­si­ti­vi­ty to struc­tu­res, com­bi­ne their in­te­rest in sur­faces and ap­pearan­ces.

#2018 #kunsthalledusseldorf #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig #yngveholen