Summer Dissertation Support Sessions

Want to get a head start on your dissertation? Come along to our Summer Dissertation Support Sessions!

The Library and Study Zone are joining forces to put on sessions to teach you how to find resources, read and take take notes, reference and use theory!

A History of Screen Printing.

We have received a lovely donation of 'A History of Screen Printing' by Guido Lengwiler .

This is a comprehensive guide to the history of screen printing, and has some wonderful examples of screen printed work, from advertising and mass production, to recreation of art works.

You can find it at 764 LEN

Beautiful Book Covers!

The illustrated dust jacket 1920-1970  

Martin Salisbury.  (2017)

741.640904 SAL

The middle decades of the twentieth century saw an extraordinary flourishing of the illustrated, pictorial dust jacket. From the 1920s, as the potential for the book’s protective wrapping to be used for promotion and enticement became clear, artists and illustrators on both sides of the Atlantic applied their talents to this particular art form. Rising to the wide-ranging challenges posed by format and subject matter, leading artists and illustrators, including John Piper, Edward Bawden and John Minton in the UK and Ben Shahn, Edward Gorey and George Salter in the USA, brought their unique personal vision to bear on the world of books. Many of their designs reflect the changing visual styles and motifs of the period, including Bloomsbury, Art Deco, Modernism, postwar neo-romanticism and the Kitchen Sink School. 

Martin Salisbury has selected over fifty of the artists and illustrators who were active in the period 1920–1970 in the UK and USA, as well as others such as Tove Jansson and Celestino Piatti, and discusses their life and work. A selection of dust jackets – both known and too long forgotten – for each artist reveals how far the book as an artefact had travelled from the days of the plain wrapper in the nineteenth century.

Book of the Week.

This week, our book of the week comes from Illustration alumni Isaac Lenkiewicz.

A Castle in England, 741.5941 RHO

A collaboration between writer Jamie Rhodes and the National Trust, this unique graphic novel plunges us into the rich and often dark history of Scotney Castle in Kent.

Recreating the castle’s past from the Medieval to the Edwardian ages, five rising stars from the UK comics scene (Isaac Lenkiewicz, Briony May Smith, William Exley, Becky Palmer and Isabel Greenberg) have illustrated five short stories that mix fiction with fact, creating a visually striking graphic collection that is steeped in historical context.

See this on our new books stand today! #plymouthcollegeofartlibrary

Typography Titles.

How to Draw Type and Influence People : An Activity Book  /  Sarah Hyndman. (2017)

686.224 HYN




We are all type consumers and interact with type in our everyday lives. Typefaces in all shapes and sizes evoke an emotional response and trigger associated memories before we've even read the words. How to Draw Type and Influence People shows how we use type to understand different messages. Each typeface is introduced and explained and then creative exercises show the reader how to draw each font and invite them to explore the associations evoked by the styles, to reveal why they have come about and how to create their own versions. Ideal for all those who work with type daily, this book provides an accessible way in to the world of typefaces, for the general reader, but also graphic designers who want to explore fonts in more detail and design their own letterforms.



The visual history of type  /  Paul McNeil.  (2017)

686.22 MCN



'The Visual History of Type' is a comprehensive, detailed survey of the major typefaces produced since the advent of printing with movable type in the mid-fifteenth century to the present day. Arranged chronologically to provide context, more than 320 typefaces are displayed in the form of their original type specimens or earliest printing. Each entry is supported by a brief history and description of key characteristics of the typeface. This book will be the definitive publication in its

New Illustration Titles!

Graphic novels: everything you need to know / Paul Gravett.

741.5 GRA

Featuring striking graphics and explanatory extracts from a wide range of graphic novels, the book examines the specific language of the comics medium; the history and pioneers of the form; recent masterpieces from Art Spiegelman's Maus to Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan; the impact of Japanese manga and European albums translated into English; how artists have overcome prejudices towards the genre; and the ambitious range of themes and issues artists are addressing, including childhood, war and survival, politics, the future, sexuality, and the supernatural.

Colour / Marion Deuchars.

701.85 DEU

What makes a colour work? What do colours mean to artists or cultures? Why does grey make a colour stand out? What colour are the oceans? Why is the yellow of lemons something to treasure?

Award-winning illustrator Marion Deuchars takes us on a journey through colour, showing how its language is at the centre of how we think and feel about the world. Colour is everywhere. Through this book, we can see it afresh. With beautiful hand rendered type!

Marketing illustration : new venues, new styles, new methods  /  Steven Heller & Marshall Arisman.  

741.60688 HEL

The market for illustration is changing. How can illustrators survive and thrive?  Illustration students, educators, and working artists will find illuminating commentary on editorial, graphic novels, comics, animations, Web, games, toys, fashion, textiles, and more, along with an exploration of how old platforms have changed and new ones emerged. Fifty working illustrators, including such top names as Christoph Niemann, Alex Murawski, Jashar Awan, Yuko Shimuzo, and Tomer Hanuka, share insights on what works now. Published in association with the School of Visual Arts, Marketing Illustration explores the impact of technology and the future of the illustration market. No illustrator can afford to miss this thought-provoking resource.

A Small Selection of Brand New Great Graphic Design Books to Borrow from the Library

Graphic design in urban environments

302.23 HAR

Graphic Design in Urban Environments introduces the idea of a category of designed graphic objects that significantly contribute to the functioning of urban systems. These elements, smaller than buildings, are generally understood by urban designers to comprise such phenomena as sculpture, clock towers, banners, signs, large screens, the portrayal of images on buildings through "smart screens,†? and other examples of what urban designers call "urban objects.†?The graphic object as it is defined here also refers to a range of familiar things invariably named in the literature as maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards, signs, architectural communication, commercial vernacular, outdoor publicity, lettering, banners, screens, traffic and direction signs and street furniture. One can also add markings of a sports pitch, lighting, bollards, even red carpets or well dressings.
By looking at the environment, and design and deconstructing form and context relationships, the defining properties and configurational patterns that make up graphic objects are shown in this book to link the smallest graphic detail (e.g. the number 16) to larger symbolic statements (e.g. the Empire State Building). From a professional design practice perspective, a cross section through type, typographic, graphic and urban design will provide a framework for considering the design transition between alphabets, writing systems, images (in the broadest sense) and environments.

Arabic for designers

686.21927 BOU

"With more than 200 examples of the best in contemporary Arabic typography and graphic design, Arabic for Designers is an illustrated primer on how to work with Arabic and understand and respect its cultural nuances. The worlds of business and communications rely more and more on the cross-hybridization of Latin and Arabic graphic design approaches. As the book reveals, it is a process that can yield incredibly innovative, beautiful and successful results. Without the proper knowledge, however, creative campaigns and endeavors, not to mention the money invested for such efforts, can easily be lost." "Visual examples and case studies span the range of graphic design applications - newspaper and television news typefaces, book jacket designs, logotype conversions, posters and art. Designers of all sorts will have a guide to proceed with their own projects. Arabic for Designers is the first book of its kind to delve into these issues in a way that makes itself useful for non-Arabic speaking graphic designers regardless of their industry, ability or level of experience."

The graphic design idea book : inspiration from 50 masters

741.6 HEL

This book serves as an introduction to the key elements of good design. Broken into sections covering the fundamental elements of design, key works by acclaimed designers serve to illustrate technical points and encourage readers to try out new ideas. Themes covered include narrative, colour, illusion, ornament, simplicity, and wit and humour. The result is an instantly accessible and easy to understand guide to graphic design using professional techniques.

Cut that out : contemporary collage in graphic design

702.812 DRM

Curated by Ryan Doyle and Mark Edwards, who work together under the name of DR.ME, Cut That Out focuses on the compositions of 50 leading designers and studios from 15 different countries for whom collage has been the key to creating vibrant, effective work – among them Hort, Paul Sahre and atelier bingo. As well as the diverse, cutting-edge work featured throughout, each profile includes a Q&A with the artist that serves to both put the work in context and highlight the visual differences between each designer by exploring their varying methods and attitudes towards to Cut That Out is a rich seam of inspiration to be mimed by all students and graphic designers who wish to explore the creative possibilities of collage in their work.

Naïve : modernism and folklore in contemporary graphic design

741.6 KLA

"A minimalist design vocabulary is currently being reinvented by a troop of young graphic designers who are rediscovering the stylistic elements reminiscent of classic graphic design such as silkscreen printing, classical typography and folk art and integrating them into their work. Naive documents this extraordinary renaissance of Classic Modernism, from the 1940s to 1960s, in contemporary graphic design."

Graphic design thinking : beyond brainstorming

741.6 LUP

Creativity is more than an inborn talent; it is a hard-earned skill, and like any other skill, it improves with practice. Graphic Design Thinking: How to Define Problems, Get Ideas, and Create Form explores a variety of informal techniques ranging from quick, seat-of-the-pants approaches to more formal research methods for stimulating fresh thinking, and ultimately arriving at compelling and viable solutions. In the style with which author Ellen has come to been known hands-on, up-close approach to instructional design writing brainstorming techniques are grouped around the three basic phases of the design process: defining the problem, inventing ideas, and creating form. Creative research methods include focus groups, interviewing, brand mapping, and co-design. Each method is explained with a brief narrative text followed by a variety of visual demonstrations and case studies. Also included are discussions with leading professionals, including Art Chantry, Ivan Chermayeff, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Abott Miller, Christoph Niemann, Paula Scher, and Martin Venezky, about how they get ideas and what they do when the well runs dry. The book is directed at working designers, design students, and anyone who wants to apply inventive thought patterns to everyday creative challenges.

Graphic design : the new basics

741.6 POY

Seven years after the publication of Graphic Design: The New Basics, coauthors Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips have updated the book with current content and extended key sections. The revised and updated edition will replace 64 pages of the original book with new content and include 16 additional pages, featuring new examples of student and professional work throughout the book, new chapters on Visualizing Data, Typography, Modes of Representation, and Gestalt Principles, as well as additional material for the chapters on Color, Herarchy, and Grids and expanded didactic material throughout.

The graphic edge

741.6 POY

Want inspiration? Pick up this book. Examples, and there practically is nothing else but examples, range from 'cool', accessible graphics to 'raw', outrageous designs.
I bought the book to help inspire me with ideas for the presentation of architectural design projects in a business environment.

Becoming a design entrepreneur : how to launch your design-driven ventures from apps to zines

741.6068 HEL

Any designer who runs a studio, office, or firm is entrepreneurial. In fact, anyone with a studio already has an infrastructure for entrepreneurial content development, and with the technological developments over the last few decades, there are more opportunities now than ever. The use of computers has allowed not only new tools for creating design, but also enables makers with entirely new ways to prototype, promote, and sell their products. Becoming a Design Entrepreneur is the guide for these designers and a breakdown of the prospects and challenges they face. Topics include: *Methods for launching a venture into the market *Tips on presentation, pitch and public relations *How to legally protect intellectual property *Ways to do effective research, and crowd source *How to benefit from social media *Sources for funding and investment and incubators *Case studies from successful and startup entrepreneurs. The ability to produce and market has helped to reposition graphic design in the new entrepreneurial economy, in which graphic design entrepreneurs are constantly raising design bars and standards. Everyone harbors at least one viable product idea, and designers can be "social entrepreneurs," creating campaigns or events that serve the greater good aside from profit-making. Readers will learn to grow as innovators and creators from Becoming a Design Entrepreneur. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Graphic design rants and raves : bon mots on persuasion, entertainment, education, culture, and practice

741.609 HEL

"From commercial advertising to government institutions to cultural revolution, from the objects that push design forward to those that seep into the everyday, Graphic Design Rants and Raves is an exploration of how visual design has arrived in the twenty-first century"

Obey - covert to overt : the under/over-ground art

741.6092 FAI

The seminal artist's recent art and poster works, and his triumphant return to his street-art roots with murals, all in work never before published. Shepard Fairey rose out of the skateboarding scene, creating his Andre the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign in the late '80s, and has since achieved a mainstream recognition that most street artists never find. Fairey's Hope poster, created during Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, is arguably the most iconic American image since Uncle Sam. Fairey has become a pop-culture icon himself, though he has remained true to his street-art roots. OBEY: Covert to Overt showcases his most recent evolution from works on paper to grander art installations, cross-cultural artworks, and music/art collaborations. The book also includes his ubiquitous streetwear and chronicles his return to public artworks. His signature blend of politics, street culture, and art makes Fairey unlike any other subculture/street artist working today. This book showcases the significant amount of art he has created the last several years: street murals, mixed-media installations, art/music events, countless silk screens, and work from his extremely successful OBEY brand.

Paul Rand - a designer's art

741.6092 RAN

Paul Rand was one of the world's leading graphic designers. Here he describes his work with the same precision, economy and passion that he displays in his graphic designs, seeking to help us to understand the nature of his relationships with his clients, his audience and his art.

Book of ideas : a journal of creative direction and graphic design

741.6092 MAL

Book of Ideas is just that: an outpouring of what one creative director and designer has discovered from many years working in the strange and endlessly fascinating world of the creative industry. Sharing advice on everything from inspiration to inbox control, facing your fears, finding happiness in your work, the art of self-promotion and beating creative block. It is also illustrated with some of the most important and resonant portfolio projects. Book of Ideas is an invaluable tool to any creative at any stage in their career.

John Berger: Looking at the Man Who Made us See

With the sad passing of John Berger at the beginning of the year, I thought that as a mark of respect to his life-time’s work and his contribution to the art world, that I would highlight some of the books held by the Library which are just a few examples of John’s work.

John Peter Berger, born in 1926, was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.

The art critic, essayist and novelist John Berger threw down his challenge early in his television series Ways of Seeing. This came in 1972, the year when Berger, who has died aged 90, broke through to real fame from his niche celebrity on the arts pages of the New Statesman. Ways of Seeing, made on the cheap for the BBC as four half-hour programmes, was the first series of its kind since Civilisation (1969), 13 one-hour episodes for which Kenneth Clark, its writer and presenter, and a BBC production team had traveled 80,000 miles through 13 countries exploring 2,000 years of the visual culture of the western world. Berger traveled as far as the hut in Ealing, west London where his programmes were filmed, and no farther. What he said in his characteristic tone of sweet reasonableness was: “In his book on the nude, Kenneth Clark says that being naked is simply being without clothes. The nude, according to him, is a form of art. I would put it differently: to be naked is to be oneself; to be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. A nude has to be seen as an object in order to be a nude.” In other words, art is a commodity and a woman in art is an object. No approach to art could have been more different from Clark’s gentlemanly urbanity. 

These demotic programmes turned Berger into the hero of a generation studying the burgeoning new university courses on European visual culture. The spin-off book was never out of print.

Ways of Seeing   701 BER

How do we see the world around us? "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." "But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.



Understanding a photograph    770 BER
The unique combination of critic and photographer results in a work that moves beyond the landmarks established by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag to establish a new theory of photography. When John Berger wrote this apparently unclassifiable book, it was to become a sensation, translated into nine languages and indelible from the minds of those who read it. This stunning work is a shoebox filled with delicate love letters containing poetry and thoughts on mortality, art, love and absence, capturing moments in time that hover above Berger's surprising landscapes. From his lyrical description of the works of Caravaggio and profound explorations of death and immigration to the sight of some lilac at dusk in the mountains, this is a beautiful and most intimate response to the world around us.

Permanent Red : Essays in Seeing   701 BER

These essays by John Berger had their origins in articles written for publication in periodicals, particularly The New Statesman. They have now, however been so thoroughly thought over, revised and expanded that they form a consistent whole. This is not a haphazard selection of the best of Berger but a systematic attempt to place contemporary art in a critical perspective.

About looking    701 BER

As a novelist, essayist, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger alters the vision of anyone who reads his work.

Another way of telling: a possible theory of photography 770 BER

In one of the most eloquent accounts of photography ever devised (originally published in 1982 and unavailable for many years), the writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr set out to understand the fundamental nature of photography and how it makes its impact. 

Asking a range of questions – What is a photograph? What do photographs mean? How can they be used? – they give their answers in terms of a photograph as 'a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photography are often contradictory'. From these beginnings they develop a theory of photography that has at its centre the form's essential ambiguity, arguing that photography is totally unlike a film and has nothing to do with reportage. Rather, it constitutes 'another way of telling'. The unique combination of critic and photographer results in a work that moves beyond the landmarks established by Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag to establish a new theory of photography.

And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos  828.91409 BER 

'Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as though through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless ... In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses'.

Art and revolution :Ernst Neizvestny and the role of the artist in the USSR      759.7 BER

In this prescient and beautifully written book, John Berger examines the life and work of Ernst Neizvestny, a Russian sculptor whose exclusion from the ranks of officially approved Soviet artists left him laboring in enforced obscurity to realize his monumental and very public vision of art. But Berger's impassioned account goes well beyond the specific dilemma of the pre-glasnot Russian artist to illuminate the very meaning of revolutionary art. In his struggle against official orthodoxy--which involved a face-to-face confrontation with Khruschev himself--Neizvestny was fighting not for a merely personal or aesthetic vision, but for a recognition of the true social role of art. His sculptures earn a place in the world by reflecting the courage of a whole people, by commemorating, in an age of mass suffering, the resistance and endurance of millions.

Berger on Drawing  741.0118 BER

A series of essays from a sensitive writer. Not on how to draw but getting at obliquely why we draw & how drawing can function for us. Everybody should draw to live vividly (forget so-called 'talent' - and abandon the childish need to make a pleasing drawing for others - just draw honestly and keep drawing - become involved in the visual world and strangely lay down memories that include sounds, feelings external & internal, smells...

Portraits: John Berger on artists  704.942 BER

A major new book from one of the world’s leading writers and art critics John Berger, one of the world’s most celebrated art writers, takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. In Portraits, Berger grounds the artists in their historical milieu in revolutionary ways, whether enlarging on the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves or Cy Twombly’s linguistic and pictorial play. In penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture, from one of the contemporary world’s most incisive critical voices.

Landscapes: John Berger on Art    700 BER

With Portraits, world-renowned art writer John Berger took us on a captivating journey through centuries of art, situating each artist in the proper political and historical contexts. In Landscapes, a narrative of Berger’s own journey emerges. Through his penetrating engagement with the writers and artists who shaped his own thought, Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht among them, Landscapes allows us to understand how Berger came to his own way of seeing. As always, Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his painter’s eyes lead him to refer to himself only as a storyteller. A landscape is, to John Berger, like a portrait, an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid definition. It’s a term, too, that reminds us that there is more here than simply the backdrop or ‘by-work’ of a portrait. Landscapes offers a tour of the history of art, but not as you know it.

The moment of Cubism : and other essays   709.04032 BER

A collection of essays by John Berger, who is as usual provocative and thought provoking. He has a unique way of looking at art that forces us to engage with art on a different level.

The success and failure of Picasso 
759 PIC

In this classic of art criticism, one of our foremost cultural historians grapples with the life and work of one of the twentieth century's most mercurial and prodigious artists. In The Success and Failure of Picasso, John Berger places the artist in the historical, social and political contexts that made his work possible.

A Seventh Man, a book of images and words about the experience of 

Migrant Workers in Europe    301.55 BER 

Why does the Western world look to migrant labourers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is to be a migrant worker the material circumstances and the inner experience and, in doing so, reveal how the migrant is not so much on the margins of modern life, but absolutely central to it. First published in 1975, this finely wrought exploration remains as urgent as ever, presenting a mode of living that pervades the countries of the West and yet is excluded from much of its culture.

The Shape of a Pocket     330.122 BER

John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming together are the reader, me and those the essays are about - Rembrandt, Palaeolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of certain hotel bedrooms, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening to the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie. I've never written a book with a greater sense of urgency.'

A jar of wild flowers : essays in celebration of John Berger   828.91409 GUN

In this collection of essays on the work of, and conversations with, John Berger, thirty-seven of his friends, artistic collaborators and followers come together to form the first truly international and cross-cultural celebration of his interventions. Berger has for decades, through his poetic humanism, brought together geographically, historically and socially disparate subjects. His work continues to throw out lifelines across genres, times and types of experience, opening up radical questions about the meaning of belonging and of community. In keeping with this spirit and in celebration of Berger, the short essays in A Jar of Wild Flowers challenge us all to take the brave step from limited sympathy to extended generosity. 

And finally…….

DVD John Berger: The Art of Looking (BBC4 Jan 2017)     701 BER

Art, politics and motorcycles - on the occasion of his 90th birthday, this is an intimate portrait of the late writer and art critic whose groundbreaking work on seeing has shaped our understanding of the concept for over five decades. The film explores how paintings become narratives and stories turn into images, and rarely does anybody demonstrate this as poignantly as Berger.

Berger lived and worked for decades in a small mountain village in the French Alps, where the nearness to nature, the world of the peasants and his motorcycle, which for him deals so much with presence, inspired his drawing and writing.

The film introduces Berger's art of looking with theatre wizard Simon McBurney, film director Michael Dibb, visual artist John Christie, cartoonist Selçuk Demiral and photographer Jean Mohr, as well as two of his children - film critic Katya Berger and the painter Yves Berger.

The prelude and starting point is Berger's mind-boggling experience of restored vision following a successful cataract removal surgery. There, in the cusp of his clouding eyesight, Berger re-discovers the irredeemable wonder of seeing. Realised as a portrait in works and collaborations, this creative documentary takes a different approach to biography, with Berger leading in his favourite role of the storyteller.

JB Quotes

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

If you liked "This is Now: Film and Video after Punk (1978-85) check out the books which influenced the Artists

As you may be aware, The Gallery is hosting This is Now: Film and Video After Punk (1978-85), which was opened last week by exhibition curator Nicole Yip, Director of LUX Scotland.

As a direct result of the exhibition, the Library has purchased a number of books which highly influenced the work of the Artists on display. The books are available to borrow from the Library.

Lexicon of the mouth:poeticsand politics of voice and the oral imaginary

"While the eyes may lead to the soul, the mouth exposes the vitality of the body. Examining the movements of the mouth, or what LaBelle terms "micro-oralities," Lexicon of the Mouth considers the relation of voice and mouth, suggesting that the importance of voicing is inextricably bound to the exertions of the oral. Laughter, whispering, singing, burping and self-talk, among many others, feature as choreographies by which to gauge the exchange of self and surrounding. LaBelle argues for a more attentive view onto voice by expanding appreciation for how whistling links us to animals, coughing ruptures all possibility for speech, and the inner voice, or "unvoice", operates as a shadow-body. Subsequently, assumptions around voice are unsettled, reminding discourses surrounding the performativity of the body, and the politics of speech, of the acts of the tongue, the lips and the glottis as primary negotiations between interior and exterior"-

Woman’s Consciousness, Man’sworld

A groundbreaking contribution to debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and the connections between socialism and feminism. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points - social, sexual, cultural and economic - Sheila Rowbotham identifies the social conditions under which it developed, showing how the roles women take on within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality.

Into the maelstrom:music, improvisation and the dream of freedom. Before 1970

In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context of the post-World War II era. Neither strictly chronological, or exclusively a history, Into the Maelstrom investigates a wide range of improvisational tendencies: from surrealist automatism to stream-of-consciousness in literature and vocalization; from the free music of Percy Grainger to the free improvising groups emerging out of the early 1960s (Group Ongaku, Nuova Consonanza, MEV, AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble); and from free jazz to the strands of free improvisation that sought to distance itself from jazz. In exploring the diverse ways in which spontaneity became a core value in the early twentieth century as well as free improvisation's connection to both 1960s rock (The Beatles, Cream, Pink Floyd) and the era of post-Cagean indeterminacy in composition, Toop provides a definitive and all-encompassing exploration of free improvisation up to 1970, ending with the late 1960s international developments of free music from Roscoe Mitchell in Chicago, Peter Brotzmann in Berlin and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg in Amsterdam.

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews

This is a superb collection of interviews with some of the most significant and influential names in art, architecture, film, music, history, literature and philosophy from the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1993, renowned curator, writer, cultural instigator, professional conversationalist - and currently Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London - Hans Ulrich Obrist has been conducting interviews with some of the most significant architects, artists, filmmakers, historians, musicians, philosophers, and writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. "Interviews Volume 2" brings together 70 interviews, taken from an archive of nearly 2,000 hours of recordings that reveal an intellectual geology of the last 100 years. Encyclopaedic in scope and intimate in tone, these exchanges produce an array of biographical trajectories, cultural experiments, theoretical adventures, unrealized projects, and unknown epiphanies.

The Book of the City ofLadies

Christine de Pizan (c.1364 1430) was France's first professional woman of letters. Her pioneering Book of the City of Ladies begins when, feeling frustrated and miserable after reading a male writer's tirade against women, Christine has a dreamlike vision where three virtues Reason, Rectitude and Justice appear to correct this view. They instruct her to build an allegorical city in which womankind can be defended against slander, its walls and towers constructed from examples of female achievement both from her own day and the past: ranging from warriors, inventors and scholars to prophetesses, artists and saints. Christine de Pizan's spirited defence of her sex was unique for its direct confrontation of the misogyny of her day, and offers a telling insight into the position of women in medieval culture. THE CITY OF LADIES provides positive images of women, ranging from warriors and inventors, scholars to prophetesses, and artists to saints. The book also offers a fascinating insight into the debates and controversies about the position of women in medieval culture.

En abîme : listening,reading, writing : an archival fiction

En Abime explores listening and reading as creative and critical activities driven by memory and return, reshaped into the present. It introduces an idea of aural landscape as a historically defined cultural experience, and contributes with previously unexplored references to the emerging area of listening as artistic practice, adopting an expansive approach across poetry, visual art and literature. - poetic, incisive, grounded in politics and history yet continually pushing at the edges of what we now consider to be sound. She interrogates notions of music and the shifting experience that is silence with a freshness and coherence that is inspiring David Toop, Author of Ocean of Sound, Haunted Weather and Sinister Resonance - compulsive and fast, rushing with you through textual territories that seem spoken, direct and contemporary while being nostalgic - invoking a past that creates the present tense. Salome Voegelin, author of Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art

The Anti-Social Family

Although family values are frequently lamented for being in decline, our society continues to be structured around the nuclear family. The Anti-Social Family dissects the network of household, kinship and sexual relations that is the dominant family form in advanced capitalist societies. This now classic book explores the personal and social needs that the family ideally meets but more often denies. Finally the authors propose a moral and political practice directed beyond the family towards more egalitarian caring alternatives.

 

Sex, or the unbearable

Sex, or the Unbearable is a dialogue between Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, two of our leading theorists of sexuality, politics, and culture. In juxtaposing sex and the unbearable they don't propose that sex is unbearable, only that it unleashes unbearable contradictions that we nonetheless struggle to bear. In Berlant and Edelman's exchange, those terms invoke disturbances produced in encounters with others, ourselves, and the world, disturbances that tap into threats induced by fears of loss or rupture as well as by our hopes for repair. Through virtuoso interpretations of works of cinema, photography, critical theory, and literature, including Lydia Davis's story "Break It Down" (reprinted in full here), Berlant and Edelman explore what it means to live with negativity, with those divisions that may be irreparable. Together, they consider how such negativity affects politics, theory, and intimately felt encounters. But where their critical approaches differ, neither hesitates to voice disagreement. Their very discussion-punctuated with moments of frustration, misconstruction, anxiety, aggression, recognition, exhilaration, and inspiration-enacts both the difficulty and the potential of encounter, the subject of this unusual exchange between two eminent critics and close friends.

Hearing

Previously unpublished script for Robert Morris' installation "Hearing," first exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1972.

Dan Graham's Rock MyReligion

Dan Graham's Rock My Religion (1982--1984) is a video essay populated by punk and rock performers (Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Eddie Cochran) and historical figures (including Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers). It represented a coming together of narrative voice-overs, singing and shouting voices, and jarring sounds and overlaid texts that proposed a historical genealogy of rock music and an ambitious thesis about the origins of North America's popular culture. Because of its passionate embrace of underground music, its low-fi aesthetics, interest in politics, and liberal approach to historiography, the video has become a landmark work in the history of contemporary moving image and art; but it has remained, possibly for the same reasons, one of Graham's least written about works--underappreciated and possibly misunderstood by the critics who otherwise celebrate him. This illustrated study of Graham's groundbreaking work fills that critical gap. Kodwo Eshun examines Rock My Religion not only in terms of contemporary art and Graham's wider body of work but also as part of the broader culture of the time. He explores the relationship between Graham and New York's underground music scene of the 1980s, connecting the artistic methods of the No Wave bands--especially their group dynamics and relationship to the audience--and Rock My Religion's treatment of working class identity and culture.

Little Labors

Little Labors is a slanted, enchanted literary miscellany. Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen's puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder.

This is Now: Film and Video After Punk (1978-85), which runs until Wednesday 26 October, also encompasses a programme of free talks and film screenings that are listed on the listed on the website. Booking for these events is recommended.