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All this Stuff: Archiving the Artist
All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist explores the documentation of the creative process. From their different viewpoints, fifteen leading artists, archivists and art historians, reflect on ways that artists and archivists deal with ‘all this stuff’, and how artists manage and relate to their own archives.
Introduced by Clive Phillpot, All This Stuff includes artists and writers such as Gustav Metzger, Bruce McLean, Barbara Steveni, John Latham, Barry Flanagan, Edward Burra, Penelope Curtis and Neal White.
All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist breaks new ground in the field of archive theory, documenting the innovative ways in which the arts are challenging the distinctions, processes and crossovers between artworks and archives. This critical reexamination exemplifies how the field of art archiving is changing theory and practice and our understanding of what an archive is, or could be.
Valuable insights are given into the archival process, addressing questions about what material artists should be keeping and what may happen to it after it has been accepted by an archival institution. This book also explores how archives can be made accessible using original and non-traditional approaches, and the unpredictable ways in which they may be recontextualised, explored and interpreted in the future.
Introduced by Clive Phillpot, All This Stuff includes artists and writers such as Gustav Metzger, Bruce McLean, Barbara Steveni, John Latham, Barry Flanagan, Edward Burra, Penelope Curtis and Neal White.
All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist breaks new ground in the field of archive theory, documenting the innovative ways in which the arts are challenging the distinctions, processes and crossovers between artworks and archives. This critical reexamination exemplifies how the field of art archiving is changing theory and practice and our understanding of what an archive is, or could be.
Valuable insights are given into the archival process, addressing questions about what material artists should be keeping and what may happen to it after it has been accepted by an archival institution. This book also explores how archives can be made accessible using original and non-traditional approaches, and the unpredictable ways in which they may be recontextualised, explored and interpreted in the future.
- GenresNonfiction
179 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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December 19, 2025
All this Stuff is an interesting collection of essays, letters, and interviews exploring archival theory applied to contemporary and conceptual British art. Composed of 17 material contributors and editors and catalogued into three main sections (artists, archivists, and researchers) the collection provides an impressive breadth of perspective contained neatly within its scope.
At its best it cleanly interrogates the messy conversations such as implicit partiality in archives, recording the intangible to the highest resolution, organizing as knowledge creation or assumption, and economic influences that shape archival practices that shape archivally conscious and self-conscious artists.
At its worst it employs the classic art history academic tactic of artificially inflating the complexity of language around topics like self referential artists, archival data structure and infrastructure, and of course the ephemeral to impart grander ideas of novelty while sacrificing functionality.
Overall it was interesting to read. There is a really cool transition from the artist to archivist section that interviews artist Barbara Steveni who basically invented the industrial and modern municipal artist residency system.
At its best it cleanly interrogates the messy conversations such as implicit partiality in archives, recording the intangible to the highest resolution, organizing as knowledge creation or assumption, and economic influences that shape archival practices that shape archivally conscious and self-conscious artists.
At its worst it employs the classic art history academic tactic of artificially inflating the complexity of language around topics like self referential artists, archival data structure and infrastructure, and of course the ephemeral to impart grander ideas of novelty while sacrificing functionality.
Overall it was interesting to read. There is a really cool transition from the artist to archivist section that interviews artist Barbara Steveni who basically invented the industrial and modern municipal artist residency system.
Displaying 1 of 1 review