“A sense of art history is part of the critical basis on which artists construct ‘a future’ of art. But the question is, which sense of art history will be shaping that future? Art history has always been far too important to be simply left up to art historians.”
— Ian Burn, 1985

This presentation is organised by Robert Milne and includes a work by Ian Burn from 1989, exhibited with selected publications and other documentation, to coincide with the release of the new book. The Estate of Ian Burn is represented by Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane.

Ian Burn has been described as many things: an activist, a trade-unionist, a journalist, an art critic, a curator and an art historian—and, as he once described himself in a moment of self-deprecating alienation, ‘an ex-Conceptual artist’. This volume brings together a diverse collection of Burn’s writings that reveals a probing, analytical artist who turned to language to articulate the need for ‘looking at seeing and reading’, who pursued a Marxist politics in the face of neoliberalism and who sought to occupy and transform the margins of landscape painting. The publication includes previously unpublished material and offers a prescient rethinking of art in a decentered world through what Burn called ‘peripheral vision’.

Ian Burn: COLLECTED WRITINGS 1966–1993 is edited by Ann Stephen and designed by Robert Milne, with contributions by Art & Language, Adrian Piper, Paul Wood, Allan Sekula, and Mel Ramsden.

Riffing off the title, this volume includes an interview with Carolyn Lazard—an artist whose conceptual and often spare videos, sculptures, installations, and performances explore the full amplitude of relation—by Catherine Damman, plus a feature on New York-based contemporary artist Tishan Hsu, whose practice examines the “embodiment of technology”, and contributions by time-based media artist Silvia Kolbowski, for whom political resistance, the unconscious, and structures of spectatorship are a central concern of all her projects; choreographer and dancer Yvonne Rainer; and science fiction author Octavia Butler. Edited with Kathrin Bentele, Anna Gritz, and Ghislaine Leung. Including the work of Lutz Bacher, stanley brouwn, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Hanne Darboven, Jef Geys, Tishan Hsu, Pope L., Louise Lawler, Carolyn Lazard, Ghislaine Leung, Lee Lozano, Henrik Olesen, Sarah Rapson, Margaret Raspé, Ketty La Rocca, Sturtevant, Martin Wong and Octavia E. Butler.

In his work, McCarthy explores the dialectical relationships between subjects like city and citizen, friend and the stranger, and present and past. McCarthy’s work often testifies to the paradoxical emptiness experienced in a metropolis. Taking the city’s map as a metaphysical topography, the confluence of real estate, architecture, and urban planning become vocabulary for the construction of a self. Besides working with photography and text, McCarthy makes associative installations. His works appear to be images from memories, meeting viewers with a torrent of different emotions, ranging from amusement and admiration to aversion and fear. Designed by Lucas Quigley.

More information on the associated exhibition can be found here.

This book documents Amelie von Wulffen’s exhibitions at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York; Gió Marconi, Milan; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Établissement d’en face, Brussels; Galerie Meyer Kainer, Wien between 2018 and 2022. With texts from Helmut Draxler, Valérie Knoll & Tonio Kröner.

This 21st issue of F.R. David is edited by Will Holder with Andrea di Serego Alighieri. Seemingly more fragmented than usual, it includes contributions, quotes, found materials, and excerpts from Maggie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Octavia Butler, John Keats, Alice Notley, Paul Abbott, Bernadette Mayer, Fred Dewey, John Cage, Marion Keiner, Anne Carson, and others. An afterword by Nicolas Schoffer entitled “Microtime” concludes this wandering, inscrutable journey.