Contemporary Art and Memory: Images of Recollection and Remembrance

Whether exploring the intimate recollections which make up the artist's own past or questioning the way the gallery and museum present public memory as history, contemporary art, it would seem, is haunted by the past. Contemporary Art and Memory is the first accessible survey book to explore the subject of memory as it appears in its many guises in contemporary art. Looking at both personal and public memory, Gibbons explores art as autobiography, the memory as trace, the role of the archive, revisionist memory and postmemory, as well as the absence of memory in the notion of oblivion. Grounding her discussion in historical precedents, Gibbons explores the work of a wide range of international artists including Yinka Shonibare MBE, Doris Salcedo, Keith Piper, Jeremy Deller, Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christian Boltanski, Janet Cardiff, Pierre Huyghe, Susan Hiller, Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi, sound artist Bill Fontana and new media artist George Legrady. Contemporary Art and Memory will be indispensable to all those concerned with the ways in which artists represent and remember the past.

About the Author:
Joan Gibbons is Senior Lecturer at Birmingham City University in Birmingham and Course Director, MA Contemporary Curatorial Practice. She is the author of Art and Advertising (I.B. Tauris)