All I Have Learned And Forgotten Again

For the past fortnight or so I've been leafing through the pages of this beautifully presented monograph on the renowned Swedish artist Jockum Nordström. Comprising of almost a hundred works, the book is a strange unfolding hinterland of oddly poetic images. Objects, animals and people are painted, drawn and collaged into uncanny, open-ended narratives. There is a peculiar yet appealing discomposure to much of Nordström's work. His images manage to marry a finely tuned sense of draughtsmanship with an oddly naïve charm creating a disconcerting visual landscape populated by owls, stark Modernist architecture, tall ships, and Victorian Dandies. With each successive image, Nordström presents a liminal world of strange frailties where folk art charm sits uneasily next to the peccadilloes of an industrial age, a world where despite the forest of suburban signifiers, the feeling is very much pre electric, otherworldly  and magical. A superb publication.

All I Have Learned And Forgotten Again is published by Hatje Cantz

For more info on Jockum Nordström, see previous posts here, here and here.

David Noonan Monograph

This month sees the publication of the first comprehensive monograph on artist David Noonan and I'm delighted to report that it exceeded all my expectations. Designed with a typographical restraint only the Swiss seem to manage, the book beautifully presents a chronological overview of the artist’s work to date. Accompanying texts by Jennifer Higgie, Dominic Molon and novelist/cultural provocateur Michael Bracewell explore the many cultural references found within Noonan's work with insightful observations. Michael Bracewell, in particular, delivers graceful textual incantation on Noonan’s lucid dream house of images to intriguing effect.  Wonderful stuff and very much worthy of your investigation.

David Noonan is published this month by JRP|Ringier.