Produced on the occasion of Group Material: Market at Kunstverein München, 6 May–18 June, 1995. From the early 1980s, Group Material worked on complex social and cultural issues: in 1988, for example, they developed a four-part project on today’s understanding of democracy, followed by a so-called AIDS timeline. For Kunstverein München they developed a new project about consumption. The space was modelled after a shopping mall and contained products of the commodity world, which were collected by Group Material and commented on in the exhibition.

This publication represents one of the many spaces occupied by Doug Ashford’s work. As the first collection of his writings and conversations, it attempts to encompass the changing ideas to which the artist has subscribed over the past 25 years. Doug Ashford is a teacher, artist, and writer. He has taught design, sculpture, and theory at Cooper Union in New York since 1989. From 1982 to 1996, his primary artistic activity was as a member of Group Material, and since then he has gone on to paint, write, and produce other cross-disciplinary projects.

Designed by Marc Hollenstein.

Doug Ashford is a teacher, artist and writer. Ashford’s principle visual practice from 1982 to 1996 was the artists’ collaborative Group Material that produced over 40 exhibitions and public projects internationally. Group Material developed the exhibition form into an artistic medium using display design and curatorial juxtaposition as a critical location where audiences were invited to imagine democratic forms. Since 1996, Ashford has continued to make paintings, write, and produce museum and public projects. His book Who Cares (Creative Time, 2006) is a publication built from a series of conversations between Ashford and an assembly of other cultural practitioners on public expression, beauty, and ethics.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Tradition at Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, 16 March, 2013– 19 May, 2013 and Grazer Kunstverein, 7 June, 2013 –11 August, 2013.