The Unexpected Guest

Art, writing and thinking on hospitality

Edited by Sally Tallant and Paul Domela
With a text by Lorenzo Fusi

Hospitality is the welcome we extend to strangers, an attitude and a code of conduct, and a metaphor encompassing issues of the body, territory, politics, ecology, commerce and the hosting of data. It is the point where hostility becomes friendship, where the unknown becomes the familiar, and where the outside becomes the inside. But it also about the exercise of power: the power to accommodate or to exclude, the power to impose oneself on the other, and the power to outstay’s one’s welcome. In an age of unprecedented movement of both people and knowledge, different cultures of hospitality confront one another as never before.

Published on the occasion of the 7th Liverpool Biennial, The Unexpected Guest welcomes and gives home to an array of artists, writers and thinkers from the four corners of the globe. It is not intended as a catalogue of the exhibition, nor is it simply a reader on the subject. Instead, it is a complex anthology of newly commissioned writing, artists’ projects and creative texts that explore one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Artists have been invited to make a contribution that reflects upon a particular aspect of hospitality, or to invite a guest to occupy their space. In an extraordinary collection of new writing, Kenneth Goldsmith has invited twenty-nine fellow poets to compose works on two key areas of relevance to the subject: technology and geography. Commissioned essays by leading scholars from Africa, the Americas, Europe and Asia consider hospitality from multiple perspectives, including colonial history, spatial politics and the ethics of the host–guest relationship.

Together, this rich compilation of art, writing and thinking not only deepens our understanding of hospitality in the twenty-first century, it also offers possibilities for the future.

Sally Tallant is the director of the Liverpool Biennial
Paul Domela is programme director of the Liverpool Biennial
Lorenzo Fusi is the curator of ‘The Unexpected Guest’

Art
Doug Aitken • John Akomfrah • Janine Antoni • Sylvie Blocher invites Jacques Rancière • Andrea Bowers • Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson • Enrico David • Elmgreen and Dragset • Dora Garcia • Dan Graham • Mona Hatoum • Fritz Haeg • Jeanne van Heeswijk • Oded Hirsch • Hsieh Ying-chun • Nadia Kaabi-Linke • Markus Kahre • Anja Kirschner and David Panos • Jakob Kolding • Jirí Kovanda invites … • Suzanne Lacy and Stephanie Smith • Runo Lagomarsino • Jorge Macchi • Dane Mitchell • Sabelo Mlangeni • Mark Morrisroe • Patrick Murphy • Ahmet Öğüt • Trevor Paglen • Christodoulos Panayiotou • Pedro Reyes • Pamela Rosenkranz • Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse • Sun Xun • Superflex • Sinta Tantra • Tate Liverpool • Althea Thauberger • Jose Angel Vincench • Ming Wong • Jemima Wyman • Kohei Yoshiyuki • Akram Zaatari

Writing
Chris Alexander • Riccardo Boglione • Christian Bök • Stephen Burt • CAConrad • Kieran Daly • Craig Dworkin • J. Gordon Faylor • Robert Fitterman • Kristen Gallagher • Steve Giasson and Robert Fitterman • Kenneth Goldsmith • Lanny Jordan Jackson • Josef Kaplan • Tan Lin • Trisha Low • Stephen McLaughlin • Simon Morris • Tracie Morris • Eileen Myles • Vanessa Place • Kim Rosenfield • Vijay Seshadri • Maria Salgado • Don Share • Lytle Shaw and Jimbo Blachly • Ara Shirinyan • Nick Thurston • Darren Wershler and Bill Kennedy • Steven Zultanski

Thinking
Rosi Braidotti • Costas Douzinas • Stuart Hall and David Scott • Achille Mbembe • Pelin Tan

The Roundel

100 Artists Remake a London Icon

Edited by Tamsin Dillon
with contributions by Jonathan Glancey,
Claire Dobbin and Sally Shaw
Artworks by 100 contemporary artists

SOLD OUT

Marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of London Underground, the first ever subterranean railway, The Roundel presents the company’s famous logo rethought and refashioned by one hundred international artists. At once imaginative and playful, bold and irreverent, these new interpretations not only celebrate the symbol of London’s transport system, they also reinvent an icon of the city itself. Found the length and breadth of the metropolis, the century-old Roundel is one of the most effective, best known and most fondly regarded corporate logos in the world, spawning a host of similar designs in cities from Shanghai to Salt Lake City.

Now artists as diverse as Jeremy Deller, Sir Peter Blake, Roger Hiorns, Cornelia Parker, Yinka Shonibare, Gavin Turk, Susan Hiller and Richard Wentworth offer their personal take on the familiar motif, in photography or paint, drawing or print, collage or sculpture, revealing in their own words what inspired their creation. They follow in the footsteps of the many influential artists over the years, from Man Ray to Eduardo Paolozzi, who have taken the Roundel as a subject for their art, reflecting London’s importance as a capital city of culture.

With illuminating texts that consider the works within the history of transport design and public art, this gem of a book will delight all lovers of London and transport fanatics, as well as those who follow the latest trends in art, design and corporate branding.

Tamsin Dillon is Head of Art on the Underground.
Jonathan Glancey is an architectural critic and writer. He was architecture and design editor at the Guardian from 1997 to 2012.
Claire Dobbin is senior curator at London’s Transport Museum.
Sally Shaw is Head of Programmes at Modern Art Oxford.

What others say

‘Full of imaginative reworkings of the symbol which has had an impact on transport systems from Shanghai to Salt Lake City … an excellent new book’ — It’s Nice That (www.itsnicethat.com)

‘An affectionate mix of realistic and impressionistic ideas in painting, drawing, print and sculpture’ — Treehugger (www.treehugger.com)

The Roundel special gift edition

100 Artists Remake a London Icon

Edited by Tamsin Dillon
with contributions by Jonathan Glancey,
Claire Dobbin and Sally Shaw
Artworks by 100 contemporary artists

A beautiful clothbound special edition limited to just 150 copies
An ideal gift for all lovers of London’s art, design and transport

Pushwagner

Edited by Anthony Spira and Natalie Hope O’Donnell
with contributions by Lars Bang Larsen, Martin Herbert,
Natalie Hope O’Donnell, Will Bradley and Petter Mejlænder

Obsessive and sardonic, provocative and visionary, cult Norwegian artist Hariton Pushwagner was fêted as a celebrity in his home country, renowned for his hedonistic lifestyle as well as for his epic satires on modern life. For more than four decades, his depictions of a dehumanized metropolis under perpetual siege from pollution, totalitarianism and mass destruction offered a prescient vision of a world increasingly like our own.

This compelling book, which accompanied the artist’s first international touring exhibition, features all of Pushwagner’s key works, including the graphic novel Soft City, arguably his defining creation, the silkscreen series A Day in the Life of Family Man, and the intricate Apocalypse Frieze paintings, the zenith of his technical and imaginative accomplishment. Critical writings on these and other works, a colourful and frank interview with the artist, and an illustrated biography of his extraordinary life complete this visually striking and timely volume.

Anthony Spira is director of MK Gallery and co-curator of ‘Pushwagner’.

Natalie O’Donnell is an independent writer, curator and translator, and co-curator of ‘Pushwagner’.

Lars Bang Larsen is a writer, art historian and curator based in Copenhagen, Kassel and Barcelona.

Martin Herbert is a writer, critic and lecturer based in Tunbridge Wells and Berlin.

Will Bradley is a British artist, writer and curator based in Oslo.

Petter Mejlænder is a freelance journalist and writer based in Oslo.