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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > From 1900 > Art styles, 1960 - > Conceptual art
I've stuck up thousands of posters across Australia to interrogate
our national identity. With each, the response has grown. You might
expect I have unshakable convictions about social justice, but I
don't. I reject the label 'activist'. So why do what I do? Maybe
it's time I made sense of my motivations. Artist Peter Drew wanted
a better Australia. In 2013, frustrated at the political discussion
around asylum seekers, he put up a poster, commenting on
Australia's offshore detention. What followed was an outpouring of
community support, and a national, then global, following for his
art. As Peter's profile rose, he began to question his beliefs - a
struggle that led to destructive behaviour and affected his
relationships. When compelled to face a painful family legacy,
Peter realised that his behaviour and his motivation to make art
shared a common thread- his father. Their relationship had been
shaped by an outdated Australian machismo - a mix of bravado,
inadequacy and shame that not only affects sons and their fathers,
but informs social relations more broadly, including the way we as
a nation treat outsiders. Told with humour, sincerity and an
attentive eye, Peter's story is both intimate and inclusive,
drawing a parallel between our personal relationships and
Australia's national narratives. This is a book about family and
identity, about the lies we tell ourselves and the past we bury. It
is an expedition to be a better citizen of his country.
Human civilizations' longest lasting artifacts are not the great
Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the
communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary
orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV
signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card
transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their inert hulls will
continue to drift around Earth until the Sun expands into a red
giant and engulfs them about 4.5 billion years from now. The Last
Pictures, co-published by Creative Time Books, is rooted in the
premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become
the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created.
Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning
signs, and Carl Sagan's Golden Records of the 1970s,
artist/geographer Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one
hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden
silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be
sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite in September
2012, as both a time capsule and a message to the future. The
selection of 100 images, which are the centerpiece of the book, was
influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists,
philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions
that characterize contemporary civilizations. Consequently, The
Last Pictures engages some of the most profound questions of the
human experience, provoking discourse about communication, deep
time, and the economic, environmental, and social uncertainties
that define our historical moment. Copub: Creative Time Books
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