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.

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.

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.

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.

“The Almanack of Breath tells the story of two demons, one of whom exists in Medieval texts and one who I invented as a contemporary rebuttal to the first, nasty one. Against Tutivillus, also known as the Recording Demon, I write the tale of a nameless creature, an invisible and inaudible allegorical figure of Listening. Against the punitive, eavesdropping and misogynist Tutivillus, she promotes an ethics of listening by collecting and donating different forms of breath to those who need it.

The text continues in the form of a month-by-month almanac, each of the twelve ‘Seasons of Breath’ holding advice on the type of breath—a gasp, or yawn or a sigh for example—that the reader should take care to listen for.

Illustrations of each Season, and the introduction, are by Collette Rayner. Many of the drawings she completed very quickly, as I read the text aloud to her.”—Ash Kilmartin, 2018

Produced on the occasion of Laurie Parsons: A Body of Work 1987 at Museum Abteiberg, 15 April–8 September, 2018.

American artist Laurie Parsons (born 1959 in Mount Kisco, New York) was active with a number of exhibitions in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then transitioned away from the art world with consistent and determined gestures of commitment toward something else. A significant body of work was made in 1987 and shown in separate exhibitions at Lorence-Monk Gallery in New York in 1988 and Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne in 1989, after which the entire exhibition was purchased by a private German collection. Recently rediscovered and acquired by Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, it consists of found objects, mostly from around Parsons’s New Jersey studio—detritus from roads, natural and industrial wastelands. The words “a body of work” invoke Parsons’s terminology in a title-less exhibition that, interestingly enough, did not contain the word “installation.” The artist’s avoidance of this word is probably a key to understanding her attitude. The status of the found objects was shown as-is. As things from the street. Each one individually. Valuable in its origin and strong in its presence, “as strong as a work of art.”—L. Parsons

Includes a reprinted text by Renate Puvogel and a new essay by Maxwell Graham.