Reading Room: A Journal of Art and Culture, Issue 2: Transcendental Pop | 2008

Published 2008 by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
203 pages
176 x 127mm, softcover, with colour illustrations
Edited by Christina Barton, Natasha Conland and Wystan Curnow
With contributions by Ron Brownson, Rex Butler, Natasha Conland, David Craig, Gavin Hipkins, Lars Bang Larsen, Robert Leonard, Tan Lin, Aram Moshayedi, Daniel Palmer and Morgan Thomas.
Designed by Inhouse
Printed by GEON
ISSN: 1177-2549

Issue 2 of Reading Room explores a paradox within contemporary art and culture's absorption of Pop. While artists continue to utilise Pop's method, 'Transcendental Pop' identifies a current shift in the infamous fascination with the everyday. Arguably, it is Warhol's defence of surface, flatness and blankness, that has been absorbed and referenced by subsequent generations of artists. These characteristic qualities have become embedded in art's relationship to the everyday - the 'real'. In part, this narrow absorption of Pop's surface has allowed a paradox to occur when artists reinvest surface with 'depth', the unknown and unquantifiable. We invite an exploration of this apparent contradiction, something which has the potential to shift the art / life nexus as we know it.