Search results for ""Author Dan Fox""

What is pretentiousness? Why do we despise it? And more controversially: why is it vital to a thriving culture? In this brilliant, passionate essay, Dan Fox argues that it has always been an essential mechanism of the arts, from the most wildly successful pop music and fashion through to the most recondite avenues of literature and the visual arts. Pretentiousness: Why it Matters unpacks the uses and abuses of the term, tracing its connections to theatre, politics and class, advocating critical imagination over knee-jerk accusations of elitism or simple fear of the new and the different. This book is a timely defence of pretentiousness as a necessity for innovation and diversity in our culture.

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In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, Limbo is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded and those in the dark. Fusing memoir with a meditation on creative block and a cultural history of limbo, Dan Fox considers the role that fallow periods and states of inbetween play in art and life. Limbo is an essay about getting by when you can’t get along, employing a cast of artists, ghosts and sailors – including the author’s older brother who, in 1985, left England for good to sail the world – to reflect on the creative, emotional and political consequences of being stuck, and its opposites. From the Headington Shark to radical behavioural experiments, from life aboard a container ship to Sun Ra’s cosmology, Limbo argues that there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal.

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A major survey of the influential British artist famed for his psychologically charged labyrinthine installations. Mike Nelson (born 1967) is best known for his carefully assembled large-scale immersive environments that tell multilayered narratives while playing with and pushing the boundaries of space and scale. Although Nelson's extraordinary output has cemented his position internationally, his oeuvre has not previously been explored in a major publication. Designed in close collaboration with the artist, this book juxtaposes new writings with classic texts on seminal works. It includes newly commissioned essays by Yung Ma and Dan Fox and a comprehensive "lexicon" of Nelson's practice by Helen Hughes. The book also features a new interview with Nelson by Katie Guggenheim; a selection of previously published texts on key artworks by Richard Grayson, Jaki Irvine, Jeremy Millar and Mike Nelson; and a full exhibition history and bibliography. Also featured are images and ephemera from Nelson's studio archive, many of which have never been published before.

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