01
Nicholas Mangan
Some Kinds of Duration
Softcover, 122 pp + 8 pp booklet, 182 x 257 mm, offset
Edition of 1000
Design by Nicholas Mangan and Warren Taylor
Published by 3-Ply, 2012
ISBN 978-0-9873555-0-8
RRP AUD28.00
Nicholas Mangan’s art practice emanates from an instinctive fascination with creative and cultural enquiry, especially in relation to material transformation. This artist book presents the results of Mangan’s research into the improbable links between: the now-demolished Walter Burley Griffin Pyrmont incinerator in Sydney; pre-Columbian architecture of Meso America, particularly the Mayan Palace of the Governor of Uxmal in the Yucatan, Mexico; George Kubler’s treatise on ‘The Shape of Time’; and the form and function of a Canon NP6030 photocopier. Mangan’s book demonstrates that a critical artistic practice can provide an eloquent alternative to traditional academic investigation and publication. His book can be read as a visual thesis that proposes new narratives and frameworks for considering innovation, destruction, reproduction and mutation.
This book extends Nicholas Mangan’s Some Kinds of Duration project, which was presented as a solo exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in 2012, and as part of the group show Talking Pictures at Artspace in 2011. The book includes: the complete frames of the video work Some Kinds of Duration #1; stills from the video work Some Kinds of Duration #2; installation details; notes on the project written by Nicholas Mangan; and collaged reference material never previously exhibited.
Launched at World Food Books, Melbourne, December 2012.
Presented at the Seoul International Typography Biennale Typojanchi, 30 August – 11 October 2013.
Winner of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) Best Artist Book 2015.