Virtual book launch: Topologies of Air

As part of our Winter 2022 Season closing week celebratory programs, please join us for an online book launch of Shona Illingworth: Topologies of Air. On the evening, Shona will be joined by the book’s editor, Anthony Downey, two of the contributors, Jill Bennett and Giuliana Bruno, and the Director and Artistic Director of The Power Plant, Gaëtane Verna.

To attend, please sign up here!

With contributions by Caterina Albano, Amin Alsaden, Jill Bennett, Giuliana Bruno, Martin A. Conway, Anthony Downey, Conor Gearty, Derek Gregory, Nick Grief, Andrew Hoskins, Catherine Loveday, Issie Macphail, William Merrin, Renata Salecl, Gabriele Schwab, Gaëtane Verna

Topologies of Air and Lesions in the Landscape are two major bodies of work by Shona Illingworth. Informed by the artist’s long-term investigations into individual and societal amnesia, these projects critically examine the devastating psychological and environmental impacts of military, industrial, and corporate transformations of airspace and outer space.

Employing interdisciplinary research and collaborative processes, Illingworth’s practice uses creative methodologies to visualize and interrogate this proliferating exploitation of airspace. Through the development of a proposed new human right, Topologies of Air and Lesions in the Landscapeconnect diverse cosmologies, knowledges, and lived experiences to counter the colonization of the sky and protect individuals, communities, and ecologies from ever-increasing threats from above.

Shona Illingworth is a Danish-Scottish artist. Solo exhibitions of her work have taken place at The Power Plant, Toronto (2022); Bahrain National Museum (2022); UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2016); and FACT, Liverpool (2015). She is a Professor of Art, Film, and Media at the University of Kent, an Imperial War Museum Associate, and on the international editorial boards for Journal of Digital War and Memory, Mind and Media.

Anthony Downey is a Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text, Digital War, and Memory, Mind & Media, respectively, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019–ongoing).

Jill Bennett is Professor of Experimental Arts and founding Director of NIEA, and formerly Associate Dean Research, UNSW Art & Design, 2006–2016. A writer and curator, she has published widely on visual culture, new media and transdisciplinary aesthetics. Her research is particularly focused on aesthetics (broadly understood as the analysis of sensori-affective perception and interaction) and its ‘practical’ deployment both in art/exhibitions and in social and scientific areas beyond traditional art practice.

Professor Giuliana Bruno is internationally known for her research on the intersections of the visual arts, architecture, film, and media. Her latest book, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (University of Chicago Press, 2014) has been widely reviewed and praised for revisiting the concept of materiality in contemporary art. Her seminal work Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (Verso, 2002) won the 2003 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award in Culture and History – a prize awarded to “the world’s best book on the moving image” – and has provided new directions for visual studies.