Fujiko Nakaya is one of Japan’s most important contemporary artists. Participating in the 1960s performances of the New York-based collective Experiments in Arts and Technology (E.A.T.), she became internationally renowned for her immersive fog artworks. First created for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka they defy traditional conventions of sculpture by generating temporary, atmospheric transformations that physically engage with the public. Driven by early ecological concerns, Nakaya’s ground-breaking work is based purely on water and air—elements that have particular significance in light of the climate crisis. From the artist’s early paintings to her fog sculptures, single-channel videos, installations and documentation that reveal Nakaya’s cultural and social references, this in-depth survey offers a comprehensive overview of the distinguished artist’s work.

Mike Kelley (1954–2012) liked to play with how an artist appears, exists and inhabits a role and how an artwork ‘communes’ with a viewer. Central to his ambitious explorations of memory, history, and the future is his consideration of how one’s individual subjectivity is shaped by familial and institutional power structures within society.  Ghost or Spirit highlights the significant and prescient questions about the role of art, and of the artist, and about gender and class, in terms that stem from Kelley’s own position as a white, heterosexual man in post-modern, capitalist America. Featuring a diverse range of voices, it explores the major works and themes of Kelley’s career, while drawing attention to aspects of his practice associated with performance, activism and collaboration, to emphasise his continual deflation of his own authority, and his willingness to invent and inhabit several identities.  Covering over four decades of Kelley’s work spanning performance, sculpture, video and installation, and articulating challenges to power, gender, class and sexuality, this book is a pertinent presentation of the breadth, complexity and significance of Kelley’s influential practice. Includes contributions from Marie de Brugerolle, Robert Cozzolino, Hendrik Folkerts, Jack Halberstam, Mark Leckey, Laura López Panigua, Fiontan Moran, Grace Ndiritu, Cauleen Smith and John Welchman.

fig-2 brings together material from the eponymous arts programming of 50 projects in 50 consecutive weeks, curated by Fatos Ustek and staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts throughout 2015. The publication is an embodiment of all the projects, events and activities that fig-2 generated, complemented by specially commissioned essays and conducted interviews that reflect on and respond to the conceptual framework and ambition of fig-2 in capturing the aesthetic and critical currency of our times. Artists whose works are featured in the publication include Laura Eldret, Suzanne Treister, Tom McCarthy, Annika Strom, Oreet Ashery, Broomberg & Chanarin, Eva Rothschild & Joe Moran, Melanie Manchot and Bruce McLean, among many others.

firstsite's autumn season began with a new solo exhibition by the British artist Anthea Hamilton.Hamilton's energetic collages explored the surreal and seductive nature of images. Her sculptures, installations and videos made reference to the history of art, cinema and performance, playfully inserting the viewer into a three-dimensional composition.Sorry I'm Late sees work was installed across the building with firstsite's galleries dramatically transformed into a series of environments - from a film studio to a restaurant kitchen. Soft sculptures, Perspex figures mounted on wheels, a giant zoetrope-inspired portrait of John Travolta and a medieval cocktail that is claimed to cure cataracts are amongst the works that comprise the exhibition.

For sixteen-year-old Jet, her only wish is to be normal and left alone while she is playing video games. However, one mistake sends Jet to Onyx Academy, a school she has managed to avoid for the past three years. She soon discovers that the world outside will change her but not to whom she expects to be, she gets thrown into a secret world with different genes, groups and rules then the one she has grown up with. Jet, learns that her parents weren't the only one keeping secrets. The guy she has a love/hate relationship with may be hiding the biggest secret of them all. As stories become true the danger rises. One thing she never expected was to be risking her life to save someone who was actually supposed to save her.

This provocative and entertaining book examines how certain artists, from Salvador Dali to Damien Hirst, have wholeheartedly embraced both the cult of celebrity and the commercial cut and thrust of the art market. It poses the question: which came first, the global media or this new breed of artist? Would a figure like Andy Warhol have risen to a pre-eminent position in daily life in the latter half of the 20th century without a celebrity-hungry media reporting on his actions? The book examines those who have engaged directly with trading their own wares, including Keith Haring selling his pictures in his Pop Shop, Takashi Murakami licensing his designs to big business, and Hirst auctioning his own works at Sotheby's. They are joined by those who have taken an active role in manufacturing their own public personae, including Gilbert & George, Martin Kippenberger and Tracey Emin. Jeff Koons' celebration in painting and sculpture of his marriage and sexual union with porn star and latter-day politician Illona Staller (aka La Cicciolina) is just one example of an artist crossing the usually accepted boundaries between the public and the personal, revelling in and manipulating the response of the media to their own actions. Other artists examined in the book have adopted different strategies, including working under assumed identities, appropriating the visual culture of ethnic groups to which they don't belong or adopting the identities of prostitutes, stalkers or avid fans. All play their part in this fascinating and extensively illustrated book that accompanies a major exhibition at Tate Modern.

In Shaping the madre patria, I track the lives of four influential women to show how each ultimately became iconic. In Spain, I focus on Carmen Polo and Carmencita Franco to show how the Francoist-controlled media used the mother/daughter duo to convey ideal notions of family and femininity. The Spanish singer/actress Concha Piquer provides a different model of female identity in the post-civil war years. Eva Pern, the Argentinean icon of this study, fuses together the salient characteristics of Concha Piquer and Carmen Polo de Franco in that, like Piquer, she was a performer, yet, like Carmen Polo, the move that catapulted her to celebrity was her marriage to a powerful man and her subsequent position as Argentinean First Lady. The purpose of studying these women, and their representations in different media, is to reveal that each one was an icon, or revered symbol, at a time when women were scarcely in the public sphere.