The first monograph on the work of artist Tony Cokes, creating a
visual cartography of a body of moving image work that spans twenty
years.
Tony Cokes's video works are eviscerating critiques and affective art
works, bringing together color theory, sound, music, and texts, and
quoting a polyphony of voices including Aretha Franklin, Mark Fisher,
David Bowie, Public Enemy, and Donald Trump. Combining political and
social commentary with cultural theory and a critique of capitalism,
Cokes's works viscerally confront the social condition, particularly the
prejudices and threats suffered by black subjects. This book is the
first monograph on his practice, creating a visual cartography of a body
of work that spans twenty years.
It features four critical pathways into Cokes's decades-long practice,
with essays contributed by notable academics, and conversations between
Cokes and artist Kerry Tribe. Cokes's work deals with mediation and
distribution, and the book itself becomes another conduit for the
dissemination of theory, critique, and counter-narrative--a process that
Cokes so powerfully engages in as an artist.
This book accompanies Cokes's solo exhibition, If UR Reading This It's
2 Late: Vol. 1-3, across three international art institutions:
Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London; Carpenter Center for the
Visual Arts, Harvard University; and ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts,
Brussels.
Contributors
Dan Byers, Tony Cokes, Christoph Cox, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sarah
McCrory, Sohrab Mohebbi, Kerry Tribe, Niels Van Tomme
