Paperback with plastic jacket, full colour, 78 pages, W167 x H234mm
This catalogue celebrates 25 years of African American artist Lonnie Holley’s practice and offers an opportunity to see the entirety of his artistic vision. Made from redundant consumer debris and salvaged industrial ephemera, the artist's work includes sculpture, painting, carvings and found-object assemblages. It creates an immediate collision between the natural and the man-made, between industry and environment, progress and conservation - conflicts that Holley tirelessly seeks to reconcile.
This catalogue, produced to coincide with the exhibition Do We Think Too Much? I Don’t Think We Can Ever Stop: Lonnie Holley, a Twenty-Five Year Survey, documents a selection of the work included in the artist’s 2004 exhibition at Ikon, the range of which was chosen to include one piece of work from each of the last 25 years. The show touched on several of the themes that have recurred throughout this history, including Holley’s relationship with his home city of Birmingham in Alabama, the link between spiritual and terrestrial reality, and the issue of race and the assumptions that are often attached to it.
These are explored in-depth in catalogue essays and texts by Holley himself, by Ikon Director Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Curator at that time Michael Stanley and by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery curators Thomas W Southall, David Moos and Emily G Hanna. Full page photographs of Holley’s artworks are also presented as well as 13 full colour reproductions of the artist's paintings and a series of photographs depicting his sculptures.