Kirjahaku

Artist Rachel Jones's first publication, say cheeeeese, is published to accompany her new commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London, in spring 2022. For her first solo exhibition in an institution, she has developed her chosen materials of oil pastels and oil sticks to produce a new body of paintings on canvas and paper. The publication will feature reproductions of new works by Jones alongside her photo essay and newly commissioned texts by poet and artist Anaïs Duplan; Chisenhale Gallery Senior Curator, Ellen Greig; curator and researcher Aïcha Mehrez; poet, essayist, playwright, and MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine; and curator Yates Norton; with a foreword by Chisenhale Gallery Director, Zoé Whitley.

A comprehensive compendium of artists and writers confronting questions of Black identity, activism and social responsibility in the age of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, based on the landmark traveling exhibition A New York Magazine 2021 holiday gift guide pick What is “Black art”? This question was posed and answered time and time again between 1960 and 1980 by artists, curators and critics deeply affected by this turbulent period of radical social and political upheaval in America. Rather than answering in one way, they argued for radically different ideas of what “Black art” meant. Across newspapers and magazines, catalogs, pamphlets, interviews, public talks and panel discussions, a lively debate emerged between artists and others to address profound questions of how Black artists should or should not deal with politics, about what audiences they should address and inspire, where they should try to exhibit, how their work should be curated, and whether there was or was not such a category as “Black art” in the first place. Conceived as a reader connected to the landmark exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which shone a light on the vital contributions made by Black artists over two decades, this anthology collects over 200 texts from the artists, critics, curators and others who sought to shape and define the art of their time. Exhaustively researched and edited by exhibition curator Mark Godfrey, who provides the substantial introduction, and Allie Biswas, included are rare and out-of-print texts from artists and writers, as well as texts published for the first time ever. Contributors include: Lawrence Alloway, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Tomie Arai, Ralph Arnold, Dore Ashton, Malcolm Bailey, Amiri Baraka, Romare Bearden, Fred Beauford, Cleveland Bellow, LeGrace G. Benson, Dawoud Bey, Camille Billops, Gloria Bohanon, Claude Booker, Frank Bowling, David Bradford, Peter Bradley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Kay Brown, Milton Brown, Vivian Browne, Linda Goode Bryant, Margaret G. Burroughs, Debbie Butterfield, Steve Cannon, Yvonne Parks Catchings, Elizabeth Catlett, Dana Chandler, Claudia Chapline, Charles Childs, Edward Clark, A.D. Coleman, Dan Concholar, John Coplans, Hugh M. Davies, Douglas Davis, Bing Davis, Alonzo Davis, Dale Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Robert Doty, Emory Douglas, John Dowell, Louis Draper, David C. Driskell, Tony Eaton, Eugene Eda, Melvin Edwards, Ray Elkins, Ralph Ellison, Marion Epting, Elton Fax, Elsa Honig Fine, Frederick Fiske, Babatunde Folayemi, Clebert Ford, Edmund Barry Gaither, Addison Gayle, Henri Ghent, Ray Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Robert H. Glauber, Lynda Goode-Bryant, Allan M. Gordon, Earl G. Graves, Carroll Greene, Abdul Alkalimat, David Hammons, David Henderson, Napoleon Henderson, M.J. Hewitt, Richard Hunt, Sam Hunter, Josine Ianco-Starrels, Nigel Jackson, Jay Jacobs, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Marie Johnson, Walter Jones, Lois Mailou Jones, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Cliff Joseph, Paul Keene, Martin Kilson, Wee Kim, April Kingsley, Hilton Kramer, Jacob Lawrence, Carolyn Lawrence, Don L. Lee, Hughie Lee-Smith, Samella Lewis, Tom Lloyd, Al Loving, Howard Mallory, Earl Roger Mandle, Jan van der Marck, Phillip Mason, James Mellow, Paul Mills, Evangeline J. Montgomery, Toni Morrison, Keith Morrison, Larry Neal, Cindy Nemser, Senga Nengudi, Robert Newman, Lorraine O'Grady, Ademola Olugebefola, John Outterbridge, Joe Overstreet, Marion Perkins, Marcy S. Philips, Howardena Pindell, Mimi Poser, Helaine Posner, Noah Purifoy, Ishmael Reed, Gary Rickson, Clayton Riley, Faith Ringgold, Mark Rogovin, Barbara Rose, Victoria Rosenwald, Joseph Ross, Bayard Rustin, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Robert Sengstacke, Jeanne Siegel, Lowery Stokes Sims, Steve Smith, Beuford Smith, Frank Smith, Val Spaulding, Edward Spriggs, Nelson Stevens, James Stewart, Edward K. Taylor, Alma Thomas, Ruth Waddy, William Walker, Francis and Val Gray Ward, Timothy Washington, Burton Wasserman, Diane Weathers, John Weber, JoAnn Whatley, Charles White, Jack Whitten, Roy Wilkins, William T. Williams, Gerald Williams, Randy Williams, William Wilson, Hale Woodruff and Cherilyn C. Wright.

Canadian artist Lotus Laurie Kang’s first book delves into the political and emotional forces at play in her installations and photography. Lotus Laurie Kang’s In Cascades is created to accompany her exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, London, bringing together two never-before-seen photographic series; concrete poetry by the award-winning CAConrad; an insightful interview with Kang conducted by CAConrad; and an essay by writer Estelle Hoy. These contributions feature alongside a foreword by Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, and Matthew Hyland, Executive Director of CAG, Vancouver, with essays by Amy Jones, the exhibition’s curator, and Victoria Sung, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s Senior Curator. ‘Working across sculpture, photography, installation and drawing, the artist uses her acute sensitivity to process and site to reflect on bodies, identities, memories, and histories.’ - E-Flux ‘Kang’s visceral works begin with the permeability and vulnerability of bodies, identities and personal histories, states of flux echoed in the artist’s use of unstable and persistently sensitive materials.’ - FAD Magazine ‘The organic, carnal feel to the work makes sense. Kang, an identical twin who works in photography, sculpture and installation, is clearly interested in the ever-morphing human body and issues of identity... [Kang’s] work morphs with the day’s light, moving between opacity and translucence, at times monochromatic and other times featuring bleeding color blocks, like a Rothko painting.’ - LA Times on Kong's 2022 artist-in-residence project at Horizon Art Foundation

Chicago-based artist Barbara Jones-Hogu (1938–2017) was a central figure of the Black Arts Movement and a founding member of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). Throughout her career she worked in painting, printmaking, film, education, and contributed to major projects including Chicago’s Wall of Respect mural. The Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite catalog is the first monograph of Barbara Jones-Hogu’s work. The book includes a foreword by DPAM Director and Chief Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm, essays by Tate Modern curator Zoé Whitley and Chicago artist Faheem Majeed, an interview with the artist by art historian Rebecca Zorach, and 22 illustrated plates, a selected bibliography, exhibition history, and checklist. The limited edition catalog was designed by Matt Austin of Candor Arts and features a hand silk screened cover.

A new, fully transcribed edition of the celebrated collection of Jack Whitten’s wide-ranging, perceptive writings When it was originally published in 2018, Notes from the Woodshed marked the first time that a book had been devoted to the writings of pioneering American artist Jack Whitten. Edited by art historian Katy Siegel, this new edition of the celebrated publication now presents a fully transcribed collection of Whitten’s insightful, searching writings, alongside a new afterword in the form of a conversation between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Zoé Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon. Widely renowned for his experimental approach to painting, Whitten often turned to writing as away to investigate, understand, and grapple with his practice and his milieu. Taking its title from the heading that Whitten scrawled across many of his texts—a term borrowed from the world of jazz that means “to practice in private”—Notes from the Woodshed is a fascinating, intimate insight into an artist at work.

Joshua Leon’s first book accompanies his new commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London. The outcome of two years of writing and documenting his own research processes, the publication comprises original writing by Leon alongside archival imagery. Tracing history, memory and self across time and site, the text traverses locations including a synagogue in Bordeaux, an American bar in Vienna and a veneer factory in London’s East End to reflect on the experiences of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the formation of contemporary Jewish identity. Throughout, archival materials and images collected by Leon–architectural blueprints, immigration documents, musical scores and family photographs–visually trace slippages between personal and wider social histories. At once a fragment, a memoir and poetic prose, The Process details the varied ideas, intellectual figures and experiences that coalesce in Leon’s work, whilst complicating the role of artistic production in acts of repair, restoration and remembrance.