RUSTIQUE

What does an oracle look like? gathers essays and drawings made by Perri MacKenzie between 2020 and 2024, themed loosely around pottery painting and vocal expression. The drawings, rendered in splashy India ink and collage, range from expressive sketches to theatrical still lives and experimental bandes dessinées. The book presents for the first time the essay Cathedral. Part memoir, part literary/sonic investigation, it meditates on the vocal texture of a Hollywood actor.

Designed by Ilke Gers.

This publication is presented as an object-book-manifesto of a ‘desespiegles’ way of thinking. It “translates” the trains of thought that architect-artists Anne Philippe and Jolien Naeyaert exchanged via videoletters. The videoletters mainly occurred during the covid period. Questioning the scope of the addressed images, these exchanges revealed a play of symmetries. It shows a series of interrogations, linking the intimate with the collective. The move towards a publication was obvious after conversations with Loes, Phyllis, An and Teresa of nadine. The desire to activate reading in a performative way, mirrors the exchange of videoletters. It continues the process-based methodology that inventively gave birth to a publication through the physical manipulation of the work. The riso-technique proved particularly suitable for this project, as the hands, the gaze and the exchange all played a role during the object-making process.

Dannie.n is an art-zine, published by nadine, about the artistic research, themes, and topics of discussion of the artists involved in nadine. nadine invites an artist or collective to create each new edition.

Dannie.p is a limited-edition artist's book by desespiegles (57 copies). nadine is supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschap, VGC, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest.

An exploration of the soundscape of coastal cities by the French-Lebanese artist.

Tarek Atoui's exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Waters' Witness, is based on the artist's ongoing project I/E, initiated in 2015, in which Atoui documents the human, ecological, historical and industrial realities of coastal cities such as Athens, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Beirut or Porto by means of sound recordings.
As an accompaniment and an extension of the exhibition, Mudam is publishing Waters' Witness #02, the third volume in a series initiated by the Serralves Museum dedicated to this ambitious and collaborative project, which seeks to explore the different ways in which sound can be experienced.

This publication includes an interview between Tarek Atoui and his long-time collaborator, artist and musician Éric La Casa; a visual contribution by photographer Alexandre Guirkinger; a rich iconography including views of the exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg and an introduction by curators Sarah Beaumont and Joel Valabrega.

The moral tale is a literary genre that was especially popular in Europe throughout the 18th century. As ways of being and doing were strongly tied to conventions assigned to social roles and genres, the rise of rationality and freethought, characteristic of this era, began re-organizing the so-called “natural order” of established patterns. Through fables and satires, moral tales expressed sharp critical views on the social relationships and hierarchies of the time, often using radical irony and cruelty, as in the tales of Jonathan Swift or of the Marquis de Sade, to decipher the untold rules at play in this early age of capitalism.

The works of the three artists invited to these Three Moral Tales are not that of moralists, but somehow assume a kind of moral dimension, as they present themselves as critical allegories. Joëlle de La Casinière, Ana Jotta and Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven make use of fables and sometimes caricatures to observe and criticize the cruelty of human relationships. The “moral tales” narrated by these three artists scrutinize representations of evil, and mock hierarchies, traditions and social order. By doing so, they also follow up on a certain spirit of the iconoclastic avant-gardes of the early 20th century.

French artist Joëlle de la Casinière, Portuguese Ana Jotta and Flemish Anne Mie Van Kerckhoven have in common to pay no fealty to trends of contemporary art. Moreover, they fought unwaveringly throughout their respective careers the need to see their work being given an “official line”. Instead, they stood aside, went underground or remained indifferent to the twists and turns of the art market and institutions. They sometimes created surrogate characters, hid, or playfully modified their names to react to the branding of identity in the artworld, and to the imposed marginalization that they had to cope with as women artists, as did artists living in peripheral geographies. In a way, paradoxically, being marginalized encouraged a calculated versatility of media and styles, and the invention of an idiosyncratic vocabulary, while total freedom remained their one and only rule.

This publication is the fourth volume in a series that documents Tarek Atoui's project Waters' Witness. Created in collaboration with French photographer and Atoui's long-term collaborator, Alexandre Guirkinger, it is intended as a visual embodiment of the work's development for Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, from the research and recording in Sydney's Port Botany, La Perouse and Frenchmans Bay, to the installation as sculptural and sonic composition in the Museum's Macgregor Gallery.

Waters' Witness is an exhibition that combines elements of artist and composer Tarek Atoui's ongoing project dedicated to capturing the sounds of harbour cities, from Athens to Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Beirut, Porto, Istanbul and now Sydney. The project encompasses an installation, performances, an archive of sounds and publications, that continually evolve as each new harbour is added.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia publication Tarek Atoui: Waters' Witness is the fourth volume in an international series of photographic books that form part of the Waters' Witness project. Produced in partnership with Atoui's long-term collaborator, French photographer Alexandre Guirkinger, the publication captures and articulates the Sydney components of this dynamic contemporary artwork.

Texts by Suzanne Cotter, Tarek Atoui, Anna Davis.