This new Michael Craig-Martin catalogue is produced to accompany the artist's exhibition Transience at the Serpentine Gallery, which focuses on drawings and paintings from 1981 to the present day that chart developments in technology.
This publication includes a foreword by Serpentine Galleries Directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Marco Livingstone has contributed a new essay titled A perfect world, just out of reach which situates Craig-Martin’s practice within a wider art historical perspective. For her text Objects in transition, design critic Alice Rawsthorn charts the Darwinian demise and survival of everyday objects in the face of new technologies. In conversation with artist Liam Gillick, Craig-Martin discusses a number of works in the exhibition and the shifts in technology over recent decades that have shaped his choice of subject matter and drawing practice. A timeline of significant world events and inventions from the period covered by the exhibition (1981-2015) also contextualises the appearance of certain objects within Craig-Martin’s work.
There are three book covers to select from, each depicting different objects in Craig-Martin’s paintings: headphones, a credit card and an electric plug socket.