Discover the books that Unit staff members are reading and recommending this summer, covering a variety of subjects from Queer artists to horticulture and the impact of motherhood on artistic creation.
Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists by Laura Freeman
Laura Freeman builds this biography of British collector and curator Jim Ede around the objects and the artists Ede surrounded himself with. A detailed and enthralling portrait of an artist’s unconventional life reveals a network of influence that peeks behind the curtain of Britain’s most prominent modernist artists.
Laura Freeman is the chief art critic for The Times. Her writing ranges from the cutting edge of contemporary expression to Tudor painting; her work challenges the depths of both the art world and the inside of her mind. Her first book, The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite, published in 2018, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was a Times, Daily Telegraph, and Spectator Book of the Year.
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
This most recent book by author Olivia Laing traverses eras and genres along the theme of the curated landscape. One of the most distinctive voices of our time, Laing’s writing weaves memoir, narrative and criticism with a newfound horticultural expertise. From Milton’s Paradise Lost to her own overgrown COVID garden in Sussex, Laing tells a romantic and wide-ranging story of paradise, tinged with the lurking shadow of climate dystopia.
Olivia Laing is the author of seven books including the best-sellers Art in an Emergency on art and the climate crisis, The Lonely City on urban life, and the novel Crudo. They have written on arts and culture for the Guardian, Financial Times, and New York Times as well as contributing to several exhibition catalogues on prominent contemporary artists. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
Portrait of a Woman by Bridget Quinn
This inventive biography of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) transports us to the hot Parisian summer of 1783 and the Royal Salon. This portrait of the long-ignored feminist artist offers a fascinating new perspective on art, gender, and politics all leading up to the French Revolution, which would reduce Labille-Guiard’s greatest works to ash. The culmination of over thirty years of research, Portrait of a Woman is an exciting narrative and a crucial addition to the canon.
Bridget Quinn is a writer and Art Historian whose work centres on the role and contributions of women in the arts. She is a frequent contributor to Hyperallergic and her book, Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order) was an international best seller.
Queer Art: From Canvas to Club, and the Spaces Between by Gemma Rolls-Bentley
In Queer Art: From Canvas to Club, and the Spaces between, Gemma Rolls-Bentley leaves no stone unturned in her journey through the cultural and artistic history of queer liberation. Her narrative covers over 150 works, from painting and photography to drag and subculture. The book chronicles the historical fight for LGBTQ acceptance as well as poses questions for the new challenges of the queer experience.
Gemma Rolls-Bentley is a curator, creative consultant, and writer who centres her work around contemporary art and queer identities. She curated the Brighton Beach Collection, the largest permanent display of queer art in the UK. Queer Art is her debut book.
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood by Hettie Judah
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood presents a journey from ancient statues to the divine mother to the self-expression of motherhood in the contemporary era. Judah adds to the canon and explores how contemporary artists – Barbara Hepworth, Jenny Saville, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Betye Saar, Suzanne Valadon, Louise Bourgeois, Carrie Mae Weems – have worked to subvert and reclaim this narrative. The book is an exciting cultural account of motherhood in its many facets and adds a new and imperative perspective to the history of western art.
Hettie Judah is a writer, curator, and critic. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Frieze and The Times Literary Supplement, and writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine. Accompanying Acts of Creation, Judah curated a touring exhibition by the same name in collaboration with the Hayward Gallery, on view now at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham.
Also discover two exhibitions about art and motherhood curated by Hettie Judah for Unit’s online Voices platform:
