Russell Ferguson

British artist Gillian Wearing, winner of the 1997 Turner Prize, uses photography and video to explore the intimacies and complexities of everyday life. Borrowing from popular culture, her work is disturbing and confessional. In 1992 she began the acclaimed series Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants them to say', in which random passers-by are photographed holding messages they've written, such as the mild-mannered young businessman whose sign unexpectedly reads 'I'm Desperate'.Wearing's work borrows from familiar forms of popular culture to produce direct, revealing records of deep-seated human trauma and emotion, often adopting the methods of television documentaries for her 'fly-on-the-wall' view of people's lives. Her videos can be alarming, as in Confess All ... in which masked individuals confess their darkest secrets, or humorous, as in (Slight) Reprise - a sampler of adults playing 'air guitar' in the fantasy rock stadium of their bedrooms. Her art can be disconcerting or uplifting: an honest portrait of the many sides to contemporary life.With exhibitions in Britain, the US, Europe and Japan, Wearing is among the best-known and most internationally recognized of the recent generation of British artists. This is the first publication ever to survey this remarkable young artist's gripping work in its entirety.Russell Ferguson of UCLA's Hammer Museum contextualizes Wearing's work in relation to historical precedents in painting, photography and video art. Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art Donna De Salvo discusses with the artist her collaborative approach towards her work and its subjects. London-based critic John Slyce focuses on Wearing's work 10-16, a remarkable video installation that charts our transition from childhood to adolescence. The artist has selected transcripts from director Michael Apted's acclaimed British television documentary series Seven Up, an important influence on the process Wearing uses in her own work. Published here for the first time in full are the transcripts of the artist's video works.

Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Sullivan creates radically hybrid works that combine performance, installation art, dance, traditional theatre and Hollywood cinema. Five Economies (big hunt), a five screen video installation, mixed and matched scenes and acting styles taken from The Miracle Worker, Marat/Sade, Persona, Tim and Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, as well as real life instances of virtuoso acting such as the story of Birdie Jo Hoaks, a 25 year old female who passed as a 12 year old boy in order to gain state social services. In black and white, and completely soundless, big hunt forces its audience to read drama and plot on the basis of the semiotics of gesture and mise-en-scene. This catalogue is illustrated by numerous video stills from Five Economies, and photographs of Gold Standard, the high-energy performance directed by Sullivan that took place at The Renaissance Society exhibition opening, which featured 6 pairs of actors all simultaneously acting the learning-to-eat-with-a-spoon scene between Helen and Annie from The Miracle Worker. Hamza Walker's essay discusses Five Economies' relationship to Modernist formalism and essentialism regarding media; Russell Ferguson and Sullivan talk about her working methods and the theories of acting and theatre that are the foundation of her practice. Published in conjunction with UCLA Hammer Museum

A fully updated and expanded edition of the artist's first comprehensive monograph, more than a decade since its original publication Francis Alÿs examines the patterns of various urban sites before weaving his own fables into their tangled social fabric with wit, sensitivity, and an acutely personal connection to his subject matter. A scene such as a Volkswagen Beetle struggling up a hill or a man pushing a block of ice can carry a message that resonates far beyond the work's simple parameters. As Alÿs puts it, 'Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can become poetic.'

Chris Burden: Streetlamps explores the artist s work with antique streetlamps, which he began to amass in the early 2000s. Burden fully restored 202 streetlamps from the 1920s to create his renowned Urban Light, which was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He realized four more major streetlamp sculptures in both public and private spaces, all of which are lavishly documented here from conception through installation.