"How many times have you read the caption next to a work of art or a review of a contemporary art exhibition and found yourself none the wiser? For many, the language in which modern art is described can be as mystifying as the art itself. This comprehensive, pocket-sized guide holds the answers. Each term, from the dawn of Impressionism to the latest digital development, is defined with clarity and precision, putting themes, movements, media and art practices at the reader's fingertips."--BOOK JACKET.

Accompanying our 2020-21 Haegue Yang exhibition at Tate St Ives, this beautiful exhibition book focuses on the context of the Cornish landscape and its ancient archaeological heritage as an important point of departure for Yang. A vital expansion of the ideas that punctuate the Tate St Ives exhibition, the exhibition catalogue brings together installation photography and new texts on the artist. Yang's work combines materials, theories and cultural references to make astute and surprising connections between local contexts and wider geographies and histories. Recurring themes of migration, postcolonial diasporas, political struggle and social mobility underpin Yang's research, culminating in a body of work that is an apposite comment on our own time. Born in South Korea in 1971, Haegue Yang is renowned for creating immersive environments from a diverse range of materials. Yang's sculptures and installations conjure abstract narratives which play with our sensory pre-conceptions of scent, sound, light and tactility. Often using recognisable household objects, her work liberates forms from their functional context and applies new connotations and meanings to them. Interweaving industrially made objects with labour intensive and craft-based processes, Yang articulates her interest in folk and pagan cultures, and their deep connection with seasonal rituals in relation to natural phenomena.

You'll be amazed, surprised, and maybe even confused by some of the modern artworks you'll find in this book. There's a lobster telephone, a painting made of food, a giant snail and even an old toilet! Find out more about what the artists were thinking and have a go at creating your own off-beat artworks.

I am deeply terrified by the obsessions crawling over my body, whether they come from within me or from outside. I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. I, myself, delight in my obsessions.'Yayoi Kusama is one of the most significant contemporary artists at work today. This engaging autobiography tells the story of her life and extraordinary career in her own words, revealing her as a fascinating figure and maverick artist who channels her obsessive neuroses into an art that transcends cultural barriers. Kusama describes the decade she spent in New York, first as a poverty stricken artist and later as the doyenne of an alternative counter-cultural scene. She provides a frank and touching account of her relationships with key art-world figures, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Donald Judd and the reclusive Joseph Cornell, with whom Kusama forged a close bond. In candid terms she describes her childhood and the first appearance of the obsessive visions that have haunted her throughout her life. Returning to Japan in the early 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she resides to the present day, emerging to dedicate herself with seemingly endless vigour to her art and her writing. This remarkable autobiography provides a powerful insight into a unique artistic mind, haunted by fears and phobias yet determined to maintain her position at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde. In addition to her artwork, Yayoi Kusama is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, including The Hustler's Grotto of Christopher Street, Manhattan Suicide Addict and Violet Obsession.

Tracey Emin first came to public attention in the early 1990s and has gone on to achieve a level of visibility unparalleled for an artist in recent times. Her use of intensely personal, everyday materials gives her work an intimate quality, combining avant-garde ideas with traditions of craft. Employing a variety of media that have included installation, film and video, prints and drawings, neon, fabric and artists' books, Emin has built up a formidable body of work whilst maintaining a distinctive artistic vision that is all her own.

Since its opening in 2000, Tate Modern has become one of the most popular modern art attractions in the world. Working with the shell of the former Bankside Power Station, internationally acclaimed architects Herzog et de Meuron have created a gallery of singular power and beauty. With the second major phase of the building, Tate Modern presents a striking combination of the raw and the refined, of found industrial spaces and dazzling contemporary architecture. The philosophy and interchange of ideas driving this extraordinary project are revealed in conversations between Tate Modern Director Chris Dercon and architect Jack Herzog among other key people involved. Featuring stunning new photography and texts by a range of leading architectural writers, this is the essential guide to one of the world’s most iconic buildings.

Unpacking the history of performance art and celebrating the work of contemporary practitioners--a must-read for both art lovers and students alike Stunningly beautiful, deeply puzzling, powerfully moving, or intensely unsettling--performance art can evoke a wide variety of responses. In this important survey, Catherine Wood, one of the world's leading curators and writers in this field, provides the broadest and most up-to-date insight into the subject yet published. Wood proposes performance not as a genre separate from object-making but as a medium that has profoundly influenced the shape of contemporary art. From the spectacular forms of intimacy performed by Marina Abramović to the painting processions initiated by Ei Arakawa and the social activism of Tania Bruguera, hugely divergent practices have emerged in the past 30 years that embrace the worlds of sculpture and painting, spectacle, and protest. Shifting the focus from "I" to "We" and then "It," Performance in Contemporary Art is divided into sections that examine the perspective of the individual, the social, and the object. Wood looks at histories of performance through the lens of contemporary practitioners: the Japanese Gutai group in the 1950s, Brazilian neo-concretism in the 1960s, and the feminist performance at Womanhouse in the United States in the 1970s are key examples of historical precedents that have been revisited, reformed, or rejected by contemporary artists in the 21st century.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition of the same name held at Tate Modern, London, July 12-October 22, 2017; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, February 3-April 23, 2018; and Brooklyn Museum, New York, September 7, 2018-February 3, 2019.