Published by JRP|Editions. Edited by Clément Dirié. Text by Donatien Grau, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Aram Moshayedi, Mungo Thomson. Interview by Laura Owens.
This first comprehensive monograph on the Los Angeles–based multimedia artist Mungo Thomson (born 1969) focuses on three series that embody his exploration of popular culture, time perception and everyday objects to question what we most take for granted. In the Time series, person-size silkscreened mirrors bearing the red border and logo of the 100-year-old magazine, pair a precise historical moment with the viewer’s own reflection in the present. The Wall Calendar series displays commercial calendar images as if held up to the sun, allowing the reverse side of the page to show through. Printed on both sides of the fabric and stretched over a light box, recto and verso are collaged together with light—the calendar grid of a single month is superimposed onto a photograph of a 40-million-year-old mountain. The Snowman series consists of trompe-l’oeil stacks of Amazon boxes and other online retail shipping cartons cast in sturdy patinated bronze.
Published by Inventory Press. Text by Aram Moshayedi.
For Mail, Los Angeles–based artist Mungo Thomson (born 1969) asked the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles to let its incoming mail accumulate unopened during the run of the exhibition. Over the course of the show a pile of correspondence and packages grew, forming a temporary archive.
This book functions both as an artwork and as an elaborate and exhaustive documentation of the work as realized by the artist. Every letter, package, notice, magazine, flyer, restaurant menu, exhibition postcard, vendor catalog and piece of junk mail is represented.
Featuring an essay by Hammer Museum curator Aram Moshayedi, Mail performs a kind of autopsy of the sculpture, displaying every facet and revealing the infrastructure of both the artwork and the museum.
The design of the book loosely mimics a popular mail-order catalog, and Thomson’s photography of the items in the mail pile at the Hammer was undertaken with this catalog design in mind.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Text by Mungo Thomson, Michael Webster.
Crickets is a collaboration between Californian artist Mungo Thomson (born 1969) and composer Michael Webster (born 1966), for which field recordings of crickets from around the world were transcribed into a musical score, including parts for violin, flute, clarinet and percussion. This publication documents their project.
Published by SITE Santa Fe/Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Introduction by Irene Hofmann. Text by Martin Herbert. Interview by Nigel Prince.
Mungo Thomson (born 1969) is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work explores mass culture and cosmology. Thomson’s work addresses the small, everyday voids that exist within culture--the gaps, digressions and mistakes that are an inevitable part of institutions and everyday life. The artist’s first catalogue overview, Time People Money Crickets consists of a selection of nine works in a range of media including film, video, artist’s books and installations. The publication is inspired by 1960s popular science compendiums.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Christoph Keller, Alessandro Rabottini.
What do black holes, distant galaxies, solar systems, nebulae and supernovas look like when seen in the negative, suddenly devoid of the color black? Mesmerizing, abstract, strangely familiar and yet hauntingly strange. This artist's book collects a group of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which the artist also uses in an ongoing series of photographic murals which can be custom-sized for walls and architectural spaces and installed as wallpaper. The four-color images are in fact inverted photographs of outer space made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Conceived by the artist in collaboration with designer Connie Purtil, it is part of a series edited by Christoph Keller. It was launched at the 2006 Art Basel Miami.
Mungo Thomson: Mail
Mungo Thomson & Michael Webster: Crickets
Mungo Thomson: Time People Money Crickets
Mungo Thomson: Negative Space