Ticket included with museum admission. Book discount available with ticket purchase.
Andy Campbell is an art historian, critic, and curator whose work considers how contemporary art and design interfaces with the archives of marginalized communities.
In this program, Campbell will speak about his current and forthcoming book projects, and read an excerpt from his book Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives and Contemporary Art.
Campbell’s first book, Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2019), is a compilation of examples of queer design from pre–gay liberation to the current day. It was hailed by The Advocate magazine as a "big, bold, and inspiring collection of the visual imagery that both represented and shaped the identity of the LGBTQ movement." His second book, Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives and Contemporary Art (Manchester University Press, 2020), brings together contemporary artistic projects with the archival repositories of leather knowledge. Discussing the work of artists such as Dean Sameshima, Patrick Staff, Nayland Blake, Monica Majoli, AK Burns and AL Steiner, and the artist collective Die Kränken, Campbell argues that in the midst of the rights-gaining arguments of the mainstream LGBTQ movement, queer artists of all kinds were looking back at past models of radical relation and community building. His forthcoming catalogue of the work of performance artist Ron Athey, titled Queer Communion: Ron Athey and co-edited with performance art scholar Amelia Jones, will accompany a traveling survey of Athey’s work commencing in 2020. Campbell’s art criticism can be found in Artforum, Aperture, and other venues. He lives in Long Beach, California, and is currently Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design.
Book signing will follow the talk and reading; find Queer X Design at the Shop at The Contemporary, available at a 10% discount for all event attendees.