Christine and Margaret Wertheim: Value and Transformation of Corals
Edited by Udo Kittelmann, Christine Wertheim, Margaret Wertheim. Preface by Udo Kittelmann. Text by Donna Haraway, Kayleigh C. Perkov, Heather Davis, Margaret Wertheim, Christine Wertheim, Doug Harvey, Amita Deshpande, Cord Riechelmann.
Documenting the internationally acclaimed collective craft project by the Wertheim sisters that brilliantly merges ecology, knitting, science and installation art
Australian-born, California-based sister artists Margaret and Christine Wertheim draw on a unique fusion of mathematics, marine biology, traditional handicraft methods and collective art practice to create large-scale coralline landscapes both beautiful and blighted. Responding to anthropogenic crisis, their soft sculptures and wall-mounted reliefs simulate living reefs using crochet techniques to mimic in yarn the curling, crenelated forms of actual marine organisms. Initiated in 2005, the Crochet Coral Reef project has been exhibited internationally. In addition to their own reefs, the Wertheims have collaborated with communities in 50 cities and countries to create local Satellite Reefs, to which more than 20,000 people have contributed, constituting one of the largest, longest running participatory art happenings on the planet. This publication gathers the Wertheims’ work over the past 17 years alongside a new Baden-Baden Satellite Reef, the largest to date, encompassing over 40,000 individual coral pieces. With commissioned essays about the scientific, social, environmental, mathematical and communal dimensions of the project, the book provides a critical in-depth look at a stunning example of the power of art and community in the face of climate change. Collaborative, figurative, material, conceptual, artistic, feminist and playful, the Wertheims’ Crochet Coral Reef alerts us to the reality that life on Earth is nothing if not entangled. “The Crochet Coral Reef risks making real and fabulated things together to open up still-possible times for flourishing…. Palpable, polymorphous, terrifying and inspiring stitchery.” –Donna Haraway
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Los Angeles Times
Christopher Knight
The sculptures are like force-fields drawing you into their orbit, catalysts for a network of social relations that mimic a reef’s … Gorgeous, absurd and socially productive, these are rare works of art
Professor of Mathematics and author of The Age of Shiva
Manil Suri
What comes through from the book is the sheer magnitude of what the artists are doing. It is such an ambitious project, with roots in so many fields, and involving so much energy, effort and collaboration. I'm totally awestruck.
Kunstforum International
Ann-Katrin Gunzel
The Crochet Coral Reef [...] has its utopian quality above all in the fact that a positive project emerges from joint work. It shows the beauty and the power of collective action. Just as a real coral reef is not created by a single unit, but is a combination of thousands of small contributions, so the crocheted coral reef is the product of many hands, many ideas and infinite hours of work.
e-flux
Collaborative, figurative, material, conceptual, artistic, scientific, feminist and playful, the Crochet Coral Reef alerts us to the reality that life on Earth is nothing if not entangled.
Midwest Book Review
James Cox
Exceptionally informative in organization and presentation, "Value and Transformation of Corals" is an extraordinary, memorable, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Art, Needlecraft, and Artist Monograph collections.
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Saturday, December 10 at 3 PM, Artbook at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Bookstore presents a special book signing event with Margaret Wertheim, celebrating Value and Transformation of Corals. Wertheim will be in conversation with a special guest, to be announced, with book signing to follow. Pre-order a copy signed by Margaret and register for the event here! continue to blog
Featured spreads are from Christine and Margaret Wertheim: Value and Transformation of Corals, a book that no scientific, social, environmental, artistic, mathematical feminist or activist with a passion for sustainability, ocean life or handicrafts can do without. Almost 20 years ago, Australian-born twin sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim realized that the world's increasingly endangered coral reefs could be simulated by a radical crochet technique based on hyperbolic geometry. Their Los Angeles-based Institute For Figuring and their collaborative global Crochet Coral Reef project have drawn attention to this environmental crisis ever since, with their most recent exhibition in Baden-Baden Germany gathering works produced by the Wertheims over the past 17 years, along with a monumental installation made by local crafters. Essayist Donna Haraway writes: "The Crochet Coral Reef is sym-chthonic. It is for and with the multispecies critters, including human people, of the deep and ongoing earth. The Crochet Coral Reef is palpable, polymorphous, terrifying and inspiring stitchery done with every sort of fiber and strand, looped by tens of thousands of people in dozens of nations, who come together to stitch care, beauty and response-ability in play tanks. This SF worlding is enabled by Margaret and Christine Wertheim's outrageous, chthonic symbiosis of science, mathematics, art, activism, women's fiber arts, environmentalism, fabulation and sheer love of the critters of terra. This is truly an Institute For Figuring." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 11.25 in. / 233 pgs / 190 color / 3 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $65 GBP £45.00 ISBN: 9783868326888 PUBLISHER: Wienand Verlag AVAILABLE: 8/30/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA UK ASIA AU/NZ
Christine and Margaret Wertheim: Value and Transformation of Corals
Published by Wienand Verlag. Edited by Udo Kittelmann, Christine Wertheim, Margaret Wertheim. Preface by Udo Kittelmann. Text by Donna Haraway, Kayleigh C. Perkov, Heather Davis, Margaret Wertheim, Christine Wertheim, Doug Harvey, Amita Deshpande, Cord Riechelmann.
Documenting the internationally acclaimed collective craft project by the Wertheim sisters that brilliantly merges ecology, knitting, science and installation art
Australian-born, California-based sister artists Margaret and Christine Wertheim draw on a unique fusion of mathematics, marine biology, traditional handicraft methods and collective art practice to create large-scale coralline landscapes both beautiful and blighted. Responding to anthropogenic crisis, their soft sculptures and wall-mounted reliefs simulate living reefs using crochet techniques to mimic in yarn the curling, crenelated forms of actual marine organisms. Initiated in 2005, the Crochet Coral Reef project has been exhibited internationally. In addition to their own reefs, the Wertheims have collaborated with communities in 50 cities and countries to create local Satellite Reefs, to which more than 20,000 people have contributed, constituting one of the largest, longest running participatory art happenings on the planet.
This publication gathers the Wertheims’ work over the past 17 years alongside a new Baden-Baden Satellite Reef, the largest to date, encompassing over 40,000 individual coral pieces. With commissioned essays about the scientific, social, environmental, mathematical and communal dimensions of the project, the book provides a critical in-depth look at a stunning example of the power of art and community in the face of climate change. Collaborative, figurative, material, conceptual, artistic, feminist and playful, the Wertheims’ Crochet Coral Reef alerts us to the reality that life on Earth is nothing if not entangled.
“The Crochet Coral Reef risks making real and fabulated things together to open up still-possible times for flourishing…. Palpable, polymorphous, terrifying and inspiring stitchery.” –Donna Haraway
