Search results for ""Circa Press""

The first monograph on an American abstract artist of unparalleled subtlety. James Howell (1935-2014) was an American abstract artist who used infinite variations of the colour grey to explore the fundamentals of light, space, time, and [kinesthetic] perception. He appreciated the colour’s mystery, softness, simplicity, and capaciousness. His precise, systematic methods, developed over many years, yielded accomplished square paintings and works on paper. Their subtle revelations — absent of illusion, narrative, and symbolic references — expand in the viewer’s consciousness. In this comprehensive first monograph, Alistair Rider traces Howell’s artistic evolution, from the beginnings of his career in the early 1970s through the artist’s greatest achievement — the group of abstractions called Series 10, which occupied the last two decades of his life. Rider’s multi-faceted essay also chronicles Howell’s biography, including his early studies and accomplishments in architecture, and offers several interpretive frameworks for Howell’s oeuvre, notably a connection to East Asian philosophies. The beautifully produced book presents dozens of full-colour plates of artworks and exhibitions, and Rider’s essay is thoroughly illustrated with archival images and documents from the James Howell Foundation. This publication makes a critical contribution to the reevaluation of an artist whose studies of light into shadow have for many years been in a dynamic conversation with recognised trends in contemporary art.

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"A little gem of a book chronicling that most gullible of all species, the human being" - Craig Brown, Books of the Year 2019, Mail on Sunday "Dafydd Jones has focused on one of the most dominant elements of the social life of our times - how the smartphone has taken us all over. It is a timely and rather sobering look at this phenomenon, done with his usual eloquence as a photographer." - Martin Parr. Almost everyone uses a smartphone, and most of us are addicted. In this book, photographer Dafydd Jones shows us just how pervasive our screen addiction has become. In almost every social situation, he shows how the smartphone has killed conversation and changed the way we look at the world. 'In the eighties and nineties', says Jones, 'when I photographed young people at parties or balls, I'd find them chatting each other up, or smooching in corners. Now I see them sneaking looks on their iPhones, checking on their Instagram feeds, or whatever it is they're hooked on. They hardly talk to each other, or make eye contact at all. And it's not just a generational thing - it afflicts the oldies too. Who knows what impact it's having in the bedroom. It's probably a race to see what will wipe out humanity first - global climate change or screen-induced sexual indifference.'

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Zadok Ben-David's inspiration derives from nature, science, magic and illusion. From Evolution and Theory (1995), where he explores scientific discoveries, to the psychological installation Blackfield (2007), with thousands of flowers, and the magical The Other Side of Midnight (2013), which incorporates hundreds of insects, one of the characteristics of Ben-David's work is the use of multiplicity as an organising principle. He creates an alternate amplified viewing space where the relationship between viewer (human) and artwork (nature) is both sacred and destabilising. The new ongoing installation People I Saw but Never Met, features thousands of miniatures of people that he has photographed and drawn during his travels, suggesting ways in which we are both isolated yet always close together. Together with outdoor works, completed over a twenty-year period, this new book brings these four installations together for the first time, in all their magical detail.

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It is difficult to imagine the history of modern architecture in Britain being written without reference to the work of Eldred Evans and David Shalev. From 1967, when they won the international competition for Newport High School, Evans and Shalev maintained a distinctive presence as designers. Together they created a body of work that is uniformly innovative, elegant and sensitive to place, and realised with care, skill and intelligence. This new monograph documents their remarkable oeuvre as it developed over six decades. Introduced by Joseph Rykwert, the book includes critical commentaries by David Dunster, Patrick Hodgkinson and others. Contents: Introduction by Joseph Rykwert; Principle works: Newport High School, Children's Reception Home Alexander Road, Truro Crown Courts, Tate St. Ives, The Quincentenary Library, Jesus College, Bede's World Museum; Complete Project Index; Credits.

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Jan Kaplický (1937-2009) was a visionary architect with a passion for drawing. It was his way of discovering, describing and constructing; and through drawing he presented beguiling architectural imagery of the highest order. Many of his sketches, cutaway drawings and photomontages are brought together and celebrated in this book. These drawings date from the early years of his independent practice, Future Systems, in the 1970s, to his final ink drawings, executed in the mid-1990s. Featured projects range from design studies for the International Space Station, undertaken with NASA, to the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground, in London, winner of the 1999 Stirling Prize.

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"An excellent resource for educating and inspiring young minds on the subjects of architecture, engineering, and the built environment" - Architect's Toy Box Aimed at young, enquiring minds, An Igloo on the Moon explores how and why we build. Beginning with the igloo, whose origins are lost in time, and culminating in the latest 3D-printing technology for lunar habitation, the book weaves together themes and ideas to create an unfolding visual story. Illustrated with a sequence of extraordinary collages, specially created by artist Adrian Buckley, the book ranges through history and across continents. Underlying the narrative is an awareness of environmental issues and the need to reconnect with sustainable patterns of building. It is a book to engage the next generation of architects - and their parents and teachers. The title has won the DAM Architectural Book Award 2015 and was exhibited in Frankfurt. "Thank you for your beautiful book it reminds us what architecture is about!" Renzo Piano

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In the third decade of the 21st century, we are witnessing an unprecedented exploration of female sexual power, while on the other hand reactionary cultural forces contrive to keep women as defenceless as possible. In this context, the work of photographer Alejandra Guerrero can be understood as a clarion call. Hers is a rarefied visual art that marks a turning point for female sexuality in erotica, her eloquent tableaux revealing the intricate ways in which women exert their erotic power. Here we see a future in which women dictate raw, yet refined desires. Each moment comes from the erotic fever dreams of the participants and the desires of the woman behind the camera. Guerrero grew up against a backdrop of sleek automobiles. As a child she would sit in the driver’s seat of her mother’s Mercedes and dream of one day being in control of such an elegant machine. Her father was a mechanical engineer whose hobby was fixing up cool cars, and she would watch him at work, taking in the details of fins and fenders. It sparked a fascination, which became an adult passion, which eventually inspired an entire body of work. Auto Erotica is Guerrero’s second monograph with Circa and follows Wicked Women down the same electrifying road.

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Tat* is a bit of a graphic designer's curse. Walk into any design studio and you will see tat pinned to the walls or placed with loving care on top of a computer screen. Even the purist will have a secret cache hidden away somewhere. Andy Altmann began collecting tat while he was on his Foundation course, getting ready for an interview at St Martins School of Art. He'd been asked to present a sketchbook, but worried that he couldn't draw very well, he decided to start a scrapbook: "I rummaged through the drawers at home and found some football cards from the late 1960s and early '70s (plenty of Georgie Best), an instruction leaflet from an old Hoover, Christmas cracker jokes, and so on. Then I started on the magazines, cutting out images of anything that interested me. And finally I took myself off to the college library, where I photocopied things from books before reaching for the scissors and glue." It was the beginning of a significant collecting habit. So what it is that makes a piece of graphic tat interesting? Is it the 'retro' thing - a fascination with a bygone age, the primitive printing techniques, the naivety of the design, or the use of colour? All of the above, of course, but it's not quite that simple. "Occasionally people offer me something they've found that they think I might like", says Andy. "But usually they're wrong - it doesn't excite me at all. The magic is missing." To a graphic designer, most the content of this book can safely be regarded as 'bad' design. But there is some magic in each and every piece that has made Andy either pick it up off the street, trail through online links, or enter some dodgy looking shop on the other side of the world just to snap it up. Here you'll find everything from sweet wrappers to flash cards, from soap powder boxes to speedway flyers, from wrestling programmes to bus tickets. More tat than you can shake a stick at. Taken together, it represents a lifetime of gleeful hunting and gathering. * tat (noun) - anything that looks cheap, is of low quality, or in bad condition; junk, rubbish, debris, detritus, crap, shite

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How do we define taste? The only certainty is that it shifts and changes - sometimes abruptly. With the explosion of vulgar consumerism in the mid-nineteenth century, the Victorians seized upon the notion of good taste as a way of codifying middle-class mores. A century later, to talk about taste had become almost taboo, since judgments made about dress, manners, food and art can often be painfully revealing. And today? When this classic text was first published in 1991, Stephen Bayley illuminated the nuances and niceties of our mercurial understanding of taste. In this new edition, he ranges far and wide to bring us exquisitely up to date. 'I don't know anybody with more interesting observations about style, taste and contemporary design' Tom Wolfe on Stephen Bayley

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"I like depicting sexy, strong women - the spirit of a dominatrix. Through my work I explore the part of my personality that enjoys teasing and provocation. In doing this, I've seen the change and growth of myself as a person, a woman, a lover, a critical open-minded thinker and, most important, as an artist." - Alejandra Guerrero. In the second decade of the twenty-first century we are witnessing an unprecedented exploration of female sexual power, while on the other hand reactionary cultural forces contrive to keep women as defenceless as possible. In this context, the work of photographer Alejandra Guerrero can be understood as a clarion call. Hers is a rarefied visual art that marks a turning point for female sexuality in erotica, her eloquent tableaux revealing the intricate ways in which women exert their erotic power. Here we see a future in which women dictate raw, yet refined desires. Each moment comes from the erotic fever dreams of the participants and the desires of the woman behind the camera. Sometimes, when Guerrero turns the lens upon herself, those moments are one and the same. Contents: We delight in wickedness by Violet Blue; Plates; Biographies; Credits.

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As a young man, living in Manhattan in the 1970s and ‘80s, Frank Rispoli was drawn to the New Wave and Punk club scenes. Recognising the inherent performance of sexuality and desire in both fashion and club culture, he documented the intertwining of the two. Always with a camera strapped around his neck, he frequented Danceteria, Tier 3, Max’s Kansas City, Studio 54 and many other clubs in Soho, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, and Midtown. Rispoli asked female clubgoers, bar patrons, singers, and band members if he could photograph their shoes, utilising the staged sets, props, and bathrooms of the clubs, and the taxis, sidewalks, and rooftops of the city, as his backdrops. A selection of these photographs forms the basis of his first book – High Heels. Rispoli attributes his interest in women’s shoes to his inability, as a teenager, to look women in the eye and, due to his shyness, focusing on their feet instead. He drew further inspiration from the work of Guy Bourdin, and his advertising photography of the period. Rispoli continues, in his photographs, to capture the fun, freedom, and performance found in other outsider communities and events, such as Wigstock, and the burgeoning art scene in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

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The automobile is the ultimate analogue machine and mankind’s most ingenious, seductive and damaging invention. For over a century, cars have provided reference points for our notions of style, status and desire. In design terms, the Age of Combustion was as rich and varied as architecture’s Baroque – and far more popular. And now it is coming to an end, as the internal-combustion engine is superseded by the battery and cars become wheeled computers, running on AI not oil. Together with a wide-ranging introduction, this book reproduces 60 of Stephen Bayley’s popular monthly columns for Octane, the outstanding classic car magazine where, for more than 10 years, he has provided the most consistent and insightful commentary on car culture, often based on privileged access to industry insiders.

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Ifa Brand never felt satisfied as a model. The dissatisfaction stemmed from not being able to represent her true identity: 'I fell “between styles”: alternative but not alternative enough; fetish but not in a typical sense. I also disliked photographers telling me how I should look, pose, behave; telling me no to red lips, no to precious lingerie and all the things I loved.’ In 2017, she decided to go her own way. She saw photography as an opportunity to be her own creative director, to follow her own storylines, and to explore her own vision of sensuality, eroticism and fetish. Hers is a quest for personal empowerment through the art of self-portraiture: ‘I find it very important to present a strong, independent woman. There needs to be an element of being untouchable. The message to the viewer is: yes you can look but solely on my terms.’

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“Reading Tableaux was like revisiting old haunts, or places I would have liked to have haunted. It sparked visceral sense memories and made me nostalgic. And the ending …” – Midori It is 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan’s re-election and the Brighton bomb; one can sense revolution in the air. Oliver Woolf is a thirty-something journalist, well-connected socially, and an instinctual conservative, whose comfortable routine is upset by a chance encounter in the rain. The girl in the rain is Candy, who is not what she first seems. Over the summer, Oliver and Candy form an unlikely friendship, and when she stops calling on him, he sets out to find her. His search leads him through a labyrinthine underworld that extends from London to Manhattan. Along the way, he meets someone who will change his life forever. A late-twentieth century Rake’s Progress, Oliver’s journey confronts issues that are still largely taboo. Illustrated with photographs by Steve Diet Goedde, Tableaux combines art and storytelling in a new hybrid form.

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Contains unseen 'candid' and behind-the-scenes images from the world's leading fetish photographer. Includes commentaries by the photographer about each image - recollections from shoots and back stories about the models create an intimate atmosphere. Designed, written and edited by an all-female team: Rosa Nussbaum, Andi Campognone and Sarah Handelman. Steve Diet Goedde's photographs are concerned with fetishism, but they could reasonably be regarded as fashion photographs, for they are about clothes and the roles that dressing imposes on women, or allows them to play. Indeed, Goedde has consistently rejected the visual stereotypes of 'fetish' photography. Instead he sets out to seduce and amuse, experimenting with humour, irony and elements of the surreal. Extempore brings together images that are departures in another sense. They represent stolen moments, or glimpses behind the scenes, when the models are not necessarily aware of the camera. Most of Goedde's models are drawn from his close circle of friends and in these photographs particularly one senses a shared trust and understanding.

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"...captures the energy and camaraderie of the city’s burlesque club scene." — Burlesque Mag Angus Stewart has spent 10 years backstage with London’s burlesque community, getting to know the performers and documenting their shared world to create what he calls ‘a family album’. From the beginning, his focus was on the personalities, rather than the performances. He deliberately eschews the ‘big reveal’. Instead, his photographs capture the friendships, the laughter and the camaraderie that characterise the burlesque scene. We are introduced to a thriving community that values dedication and loyalty, and where the exotic is always laced with humour; and we hear from performers Belle de Beauvoir, REIx, Lady Cheek, Lady May and Lynn Ruth Miller. Burlesque can be provocative, it can be political, and it can be serious. But it can also be a lot of fun. ‘I discovered that while some performers earn a living from burlesque, most have other jobs – anything from seamstresses to doctors, to company directors. This huge melting pot of professional experience, coupled with a variety of reasons for wanting to perform, means that personal development is encouraged. It’s an incredibly supportive community, and I wanted to try to capture that spirit.’ – Angus Stewart

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Walmer Yard, in London, is the first residential building in Britain designed by architect Peter Salter. The culmination of ten years of planning, the project makes physical the ideas and forms that Salter has developed over the last three decades. Although modest in scale, the project is extraordinary in many ways. On an irregularly shaped site, Salter's design brings four houses into a complex relationship with each other, half-formal, half-familiar, interdependent yet solitary. Similarly, the relations among the core team who developed the design are more nuanced than in most architectural projects, since they all met at the Architectural Association in Peter Salter's unit, where Crispin Kelly (the client) and Fenella Collingridge (Peter's current collaborator) were student contemporaries. This book documents the project with Peter Salter's original pen-and-ink drawings and Helene Binet's extraordinary photographs.

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Callum Innes is one of the few artists working in abstraction to include watercolour as a major part of his practice. As with many painters, his explorations in this medium form a parallel body of work, an activity taken on as a kind of ‘break’ from his other painting, with different circumstances, conditions and intentions. Innes has been making watercolours for more than 25 years. He began to explore the medium when he was asked to do a show at the Kunsthaus, in Zurich. He says: "I blithely said yes to an exhibition without ever having made a watercolour before. It caused a lot of stress at the time, but I gradually developed a way of working with paper and pigment. I am still making watercolours, although they have changed over the years, and now I realise that they inform the oil paintings more and more. When you place two pigments together, either opposite or complementary, and then dissolve them in water you achieve a completely new colour which only reveals itself on the paper. I am often surprised and disappointed in the same hour. "It has been a couple of years since I last spent time with watercolours. When lockdown occurred, in March 2020, I was setting up a new studio, overlooking a fjord in Oslo. It was unfamiliar, and I had no reference to earlier works as I do in Edinburgh. I started to work on a new watercolour series, focusing on them for a week at a time, always starting the day with a black and white one, just to get my hand in … the black and white ones are the most elusive. "This new body of 50 watercolours feels stronger and more luminous than previous ones. I have kept them sequential in the book, to show how each work informs the next and so on."

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