Islands and Contemporary Art - by Gill Perry (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A profound journey through diverse representations of islands in contemporary art.

In this groundbreaking exploration, Gill Perry looks at the vital role that islands play in contemporary visual arts. Responding to the urgency of migration, climate change, and colonialism, artists create compelling and provocative works that resonate across colonized archipelagos. Perry navigates the British Isles, Ireland, the Caribbean, Pacific Oceania, and the Galápagos and illuminates the role of islands in installation, multimedia, and film projects by renowned artists such as Robert Smithson, Lisa Reihana, Roni Horn, Rodney Graham, Tacita Dean, Cornelia Parker, and others from the 1970s to today.

Review Quotes

"For artists the island offers an irresistible trope of paradise and dystopia. Like an incredible group exhibition - museums take note! - Gill Perry's unprecedented study takes the legacy of Robert Smithson as her point of departure for an enthralling journey around the practices of 21st-century artists. Spanning a vast range of mediums and aesthetic and conceptual strategies, her beautifully written and revelatory survey reveals the deeper concerns shaping the art of our time as artists engage with the legacies of patriarchy, colonialism and environmental destruction. Essential reading for students, scholars, curators and practitioners, this book will also be illuminating for the interested lay reader."--Iwona Blazwick, curator, Arts AlUla

"In this exemplary and curious interweaving of themes, environments, communities and artworks, Gill Perry mobilizes an ecologically aware, feminist and postcolonial intelligence in the exploration of a conceptual archipelago of allegory, myth and creative place making. This generously illustrated book explores gender, ecology, politics and aesthetics, entangled with the facts and fantasies of island stories. It provides an insightful understanding of how artists work to stimulate spectacular and elemental intimations of these elusive themes."--Barry Curtis, Istituto Marangoni and Central St Martins, London

"Perry has produced something remarkable for anyone interested in contemporary art and culture. Islands and Contemporary Art is a totally captivating and accessible survey of works and ideas illuminating our relationship to islands, both real and imaginary. It addresses important issues about how we value art, literature and film in a way that will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the forces - ecological, cultural and political - shaping our world."--Michael Corris, Southern Methodist University

About the Author

Gill Perry is professor of art history at the Open University. Her books include Playing at Home: The House in Contemporary Art, also published by Reaktion Books.