In specially commissioned essays, as well as interviews, archival material, and new texts by the artist, this first monograph addresses the in-depth investigation of Plender's research and artwork into educational models and their relation to social organization.
As the first significant overview of the work by artist Olivia Plender, this monograph navigates through the evolving attitudes to historical and contemporary forms of communication and education that her research-based practice has explored for the last ten years. From the reappraisal of Plender's project Google Office (2010), in which artistic agency meets Liberation Management, to rethinking of the Open University as a model where the educational role of television and its relation to the public was reconfigured, her work is a critical envisioning of labor's extensive influence; addressing the work ethic embedded into mainstream educational systems during the industrial era, and the alternative movements that placed creativity and the arts as central to an attempt at emancipation.
Published following the three-part eponymous exhibition at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes; Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol; and CCA, Glasgow, in 2012.
Olivia Plender (born 1977 in London, lives and works in Berlin) has exhibited worldwide. Her research-based practice varies from graphic novels to performance, video and installation.
Edited by Remco de Blaaij, Gerrie van Noord, Olivia Plender.
Texts by Angus Cameron, Maeve Connolly, Lars Bang Larsen, Olivia Plender, Tirdad Zolghadr.
