The Conditions of Being Art is the first book to examine the activities of groundbreaking contemporary art galleries Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983–2004), and the transnational milieu of artists, dealers and critics that surrounded them.

Drawing on the archives of dealers Pat Hearn and Colin de Land—both, independently, legendary players on the New York art scene of the 1980s and ’90s, and one of the great love stories of the art world—this publication illustrates their distinctive artistic practices, significant exhibitions and events, and daily business. Hearn and de Land championed art that challenged the business of running an art gallery; artists like Renée Green and Susan Hiller, Andrea Fraser and Cady Noland, who employed conceptualism and installation, social and institutional critique.

Contributing to the history of exhibitions, institutions and curating, The Conditions of Being Art addresses a significant gap in this literature around experimental commercial spaces in recent art history. This publication is the first book-length critical account of the alternative commercial gallery practices of the 1990s, a moment and a scene that is extremely influential to many of today’s art dealers, curators and artists.

Hearn and de Land’s gallery practices explored new experimental and ethical possibilities within the selling of art, testing the relationship of contemporary art to its markets. In this volume, full-color images, in-depth scholarly investigations and detailed gallery histories vibrantly document how Hearn and de Land tested new notions of what an art gallery could be.

Publisher: CCS Bard; Dancing Foxes Press

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Curating Research. Paul O’Neill & Mick Wilson (Eds.). Open Editions.

This anthology of newly commissioned texts presents a series of detailed examples of the different kinds of knowledge production that have recently emerged within the field of curatorial practice.

Language: English
Pages: 266
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 9780949004031

€24.00
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– Recurating: When Exhibitions Become Reified
– Thinking Contemporary Curating, Terry Smith. Book launch

Terry Smith, Andrew W Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh
with Tara McDowell, Associate Professor and Director, Curatorial Practice, MADA
and Rebecca Coates, Independent curator and lecturer, Art History, University of Melbourne

This talk examines the recent phenomenon of restaging historical exhibitions, culminating in the dramatic and polarizing rehang of When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 at Fondazione Prada in Venice this year, undertaken by Germano Celant with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas. The topic will be introduced and contextualized by Tara McDowell and concluded by a conversation among Terry Smith, Tara McDowell, and Rebecca Coates.

The talk is followed by the Australian launch of Smith’s recent book, Thinking Contemporary Curating, published by Independent Curators International. The book launch is, in turn, followed by the launch of issue 7.2 of un Magazine, a free and independent magazine for dialogue in contemporary art.

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Talk: 3:00–5:00pm
Book launch: 5:00–6:00pm

Friday 6 December 2013

Free entry

Motto Melbourne / Magic Johnston
27–29 Johnston St
Collingwood
Victoria 3066

Ritual Without Myth. Royal College of Art.

Designed by Rustan Söderling and edited by Lily Hall and Laura Smith, the catalogue for Ritual without Myth features a series of short essays that contextualise the practice of the artists in the exhibition, and provide insight into their diverse approaches to ritual, as well as their embodiment and subversion of dominant myths.

Interspersed throughout the catalogue, a visual essay expands upon these written narratives through a series of images and quotations, including images from the Warburg Institute’s Photographic Collection, London, that reinforce and open out existing connections between the exhibited works.

The catalogue is accompanied by a full-colour insert with photographic documentation of the exhibition.

Printed by Art Quarters Press, the Ritual without Myth catalogue is printed on Cyclus Offset 100% recycled paper manufactured from 100% de-inked waste at Dalum mill.

Pages: 96
ISBN: 978-1-907342-31-8

D 9€

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Manifesta Journal #12

Manifesta Journal is an international journal focusing on the practices and theories of contemporary curatorship. Manifesta Journal explores and analyzes current developments in curatorial work, in correspondence with the evolution of the Manifesta Biennial over the course of the past decade. The main aim of the journal is to give a stronger voice to an up-and-coming group of (non-) institutional curators, intellectuals, theorists and critics, and to function as a platform for the articulation and discussion of their positions within a pan-European and transcontinental context.
Justified by what is now the “stable” status of the curator, by the diversity within the broader community of professional curators and by the network of curatorial schools, programs and courses in Europe and beyond, Manifesta Journal intends to continue stimulating the establishment of curatorial self-reflection and investigation.

D 15 €

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