Formless Irregular

by Babs Santini

The absurd, playful, and often deeply strange art of Steven Stapleton. Absurd, playful and often deeply strange, Steven Stapleton's art recalls the otherness in the work of Roland Topor, Hannah Höch, and Max Ernst. The images represent a vivid visual interpretation of Nurse With Wound's infamous designation as “purveyors of sinister whimsy,” existing in a visual realm that reflects the early twentieth-century European avant-garde. Occasionally sinister, always enigmatic, and often humorous, the counterpoints explored in Stapleton's assembled montages and paintings suggest a kind of suspended reality, where logic is replaced by something oddly familiar yet ultimately unknowable. Produced in close collaboration with Stapleton, this beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated hardcover volume includes photographs and reproductions from his personal archive and from private collections around the world. Also included are essays by his long time collaborator David Tibet and his friend screenwriter Geoff Cox. “I admire Nurse With Wound, the self-proclaimed 'purveyors of sinister whimsy to the wretched,' not only for a staggering level of productivity, but for being so reliably unpredictable. Whatever you think you know about NWW will likely be confounded by whatever appears next.”
—Bob Nickas, Frieze

256 pages, Hardcover

Published April 20, 2021