Affirmation Dungeon - new title from Clouds Publishing

Clouds and Michael Lett are pleased to announce the release of a new book:

----------------------------------------------- Dan Arps: Affirmation Dungeon ----------------------------------------------- Monday 5 December, 6pm ----------------------------------------------- Snakepit 33 High Street, Auckland -----------------------------------------------

This major book surveys Arps’ recent work, but through a peculiar lens. This artist is known for making spaces – dystopic, uncomfortable, decrepit, paranoid, aspirational – that are in their own reality. Here, they are reconstructed as parts of one overarching space, the ‘affirmation dungeon’, in which self-help is crow-barred off its pedestal, along with other forms of normative shaming. This book has been put together with the logic of dungeon-mapper or game-builder, a temporarily liberated reality forming around the viewer as avatar. What is really pictured is unclear, but this space can be looked at as indexing or growing out of pressure-intensive neoliberal New Zealand – a hollowed-out society into which one is compelled to amass rubbish as a way of claiming space or enacting sovereignty. The way in which Arps has consistently worked with and altered found materials is echoed in the way in which text material has been assembled for the book, involving pieces taken from the Internet and earlier publications, and slippages and glitches in language, time and architectural space. This project is supported by Creative New Zealand and by Saatchi & Saatchi through their association with The Walters Prize, organised by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. Texts by Dan Arps, Jon Bywater, Matthew Hyland and Narelle Pathways Jon Bywater's essay 'Work-Life Balance' was originally published in the 'Art Goes On' issue of Reading Room: A Journal of Art and Culture, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, 2009.

----------------------------------------------- Published by Clouds and Michael Lett ----------------------------------------------- Texts by Dan Arps, Jon Bywater, Matthew Hyland and Narelle Pathways ----------------------------------------------- ISBN: 978-0-9864628-9-4 ----------------------------------------------- 340 pages plus insert Hardcover English - rrp $69.95 ----------------------------------------------- Edition: 1000 Dimensions: 210 x 240 x 28 mm Individually shrinkwrapped ---------------------------------------------

Available from selected bookshops and www.clouds.co.nz Clouds publishing PO Box 68-187 Newton, Auckland 1145 Aotearoa New Zealand +64 9 309 2604 hello@clouds.co.nz www.clouds.co.nz