Brackenridge Park began its life as a heavily wooded, bucolic driving park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the next 120 years it evolved into the sprawling, multifaceted jewel San Antonians enjoy today, home to the San Antonio Zoo, the state’s first public golf course, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Sunken Garden Theater, and the Witte Museum.The land that Brackenridge Park occupies, near the San Antonio River headwaters, has been reinvented many times over. People have gathered there s...
This beautifully designed book is a celebration of one of the world's most creative, dynamic and fascinating cities: Tokyo. It spans 400 years, with highlights including Kano school paintings; the iconic woodblock prints of Hiroshige; Tokyo Pop Art posters; the photography of Moriyama Daido and Ninagawa Mika; manga; film; and contemporary art by Murakami Takashi and Aida Makoto. Visually bold and richly detailed, this publication looks at a city which has undergone constant destruction and renew...
The ice mountains of the Karakoram are among the world's greatest natural treasures. At 8611 metres (28,251 ft), K2 is the second tallest mountain on Earth. There are three other mountains in the range that top 8000 metres (26,247 ft) - Gasherbrum I, Broad Peak and Gasherbrum II - and more than 60 peaks above 7000 metres (22,966 ft). Extending in a south-easterly direction from the north-eastern tip of Afghanistan and spanning the borders of Pakistan, India and China, the Karakoram is part of a...
A Robert Smithson Film - Broken Circle Spiral Hill
by Roel Arkesteijn, Eva Schmidt, and Theo Tegelaers
Unthought Environments brings together art influenced by the forces that are integral to our daily lives, yet are easily forgotten or overlooked, such as the ancient elements of air, fire, water, and earth; weather systems; geopolitics; and the hidden physical components of our virtual world. Informed by media studies, ecology, and philosophy, these multi-media artworks explore the elemental sphere as it intersects with the human-made. This exhibition catalog brings together images from the ex...
An exploration of the realities of environmental and social catastrophe through art practices. “And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?” wrote the Chilean poet, artist, and feminist activist Cecilia Vicuña in the early 1970s. Vicuña countered anthropocentric and hetero-patriarchal urges with healing and appreciation, reviving the aesthetic and spiritual bonds between human and more-than-human entities and worlds. Revolving around this vision of interconnectivity, this book, which accom...
The work of the artist couple Christo (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude (1935–2009) resists categorization. It is a hybrid of art, urban planning, architecture, and engineering, but above all an aesthetic uniquely their own: surreal and ethereal environmental interventions that have graced monuments, public parks, and centers of power alike. This compact book spans the complete career of the couple who were born on the very same day, met in Paris, fell in love, and became a creative team like no oth...
An illustrated examination of Beverly Buchanan's 1981 environmental sculpture, which exists in an ongoing state of ruination. Beverly Buchanan's Marsh Ruins (1981) are large, solid mounds of cement and shell-based tabby concrete, yet their presence has always been elusive. Hiding in the tall grasses and brackish waters of the Marshes of Glynn, on the southeast coast of Georgia, the Marsh Ruins merge with their surroundings as they enact a curious and delicate tension between destruction and en...
Tom Burrows, and the exhibition that preceded the book, presents work by the artist from his early career to the present. The book is a timely refocusing of attention on an artist who has made an immense contribution to the development of art in Vancouver, not only as an artist but as an educator and activist as well. Burrows first rose to prominence in the late-1960s and was included in several exhibitions at the UBC Fine Arts Library, an institution that was seminal in encouraging Vancouver's...
Clare Reilly: Eye of the Calm is an exploration of New Zealand painter Clare Reilly’s life and work. The mixture of autobiographical writing and gorgeous paintings subtly shows how Reilly’s art and experiences are entwined. Her themes cover the issues of habitat destruction and renewal, depicting native New Zealand birds in the landscape as metaphors for joy. In an increasingly troubled and fast paced world, Reilly’s work offers the viewer a place to reflect on the healing qualities of nature an...
The Christo Interviews brings together a series of conversations between the artist, who is best known for the large-scale, site-specific environmental installations he created in collaboration with artistic partner and wife, Jeanne-Claude, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the pre-eminent commentator on and curator of contemporary art. Taking place between December 2012 and May 2020, the interviews provide insight into the individual minds of two of the art world’s most esteemed figures, while also trac...
This book presents an ecophilosophy of cinema: an account of the moving image in relation to the lived ecologies - material, social, and perceptual relations - within which movies are produced, consumed, and incorporated into cultural life. If cinema takes us on mental and emotional journeys, the author argues that those journeys that have reshaped our understanding of ourselves, life, and the Earth and universe. A range of styles are examined, from ethnographic and wildlife documentaries, weste...
Take inspiration from nature and sew, create and craft all year round with best-selling author and textile artist Tilly Rose. Boost your creativity, develop mindfulness through making, and create your own unique textile treasures. Bursting from every page are ideas for unique and meaningful textile artworks, each with a story to tell. From eco-dyeing, cyanotype and weaving to collage, embroidery and slow stitching, Tilly harnesses many crafts to help her connect with Mother Earth in every seas...
Reflecting on a range of themes, from extractive industries to the politics of care, this timely exhibition catalog looks at environmental and gender justice as indivisible parts of a global struggle. A culturally diverse selection of works by Laura Aguilar, melanie bonajo, Xaviera Simmons, Minerva Cuevas, Barbara Kruger, Nadia Huggins, Ana Mendieta, Sim Chi Yin, Pamela Singh, Francesca Woodman and others are presented alongside works of an activist nature to demonstrate how women are regularly...
Award-winning author, curator and activist Lucy R. Lippard is one of America's most influential writers on contemporary art, and she is a pioneer in the fields of cultural geography, conceptualism and feminist art. Working from experience in a New Mexico village and inspired by gravel pits in the landscape, Lippard weaves a series of themes into a tapestry that illuminates the relationship between culture and the land. From threatened Native American sacred sites to the history of uranium mining...
The Birds of America is one of the best known natural history books ever produced and also the most valuable - a complete set sold at auction in December 2010 for GBP7.3 million, which is a world record for a book. First published in double elephant size (approximately a metre tall) in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is famous for its stunning life-size illustrations of birds set within landscaped backgrounds. The book was issued in parts over 11 years and only around 200 completed...
Despite an increasing demand for energy-efficient design, it is generally accepted that architects rarely return to their creations to ensure that they are performing as intended: to talk to users, observe how the buildings work and have been adapted, and whether the environments created are enjoyable places to be in. While most building professionals recognise the value of follow-through and involvement after handover, there are many perceived barriers to undertaking this work in practice. Th...
