Art Metropole

#05335

My Best Thing

Artist

Frances Stark

Date

2012

Publisher

Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver)

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

Size

10 × 14.5 × 1 cm

Length

88 

This intimate publication focuses on Frances Stark’s pivotal feature length video ‘My Best Thing’, a digital video animation, which traces the development of two sexual encounters that progress into conversations about film, literature, art, collaboration and subjectivity. British curator Mark Godfrey captures the density of this recent work by Stark with an in-depth essay considering the artist’s use of online sex-chat rooms as vehicles for her creative process. Godfrey addresses Stark’s resolve in representing her broad and at times clashing interests from her recently found enthusiasm for the controversial dancehall musician Beenie Man to her homage for the highly respected feminist painter Sylvia Sleigh. In conveying the complexity of her interests Stark manages to imbue these commonly disparaged internet sites, as well as their users, with positive, productive and social characteristics. In Stark’s depiction, as Godfrey states, ‘strangers meet, communicate, share ideas rather than brand preferences, and change how each one sees the world.’ This publication focuses on Frances Stark’s pivotal feature-length video My Best Thing, capturing the complexity of her work with an in-depth essay by British curator Mark Godfrey, who considers the artist’s use of online sex-chat rooms as vehicles for her creative process.

With contributions by Nigel Price, Kitty Scott, Mark Godfrey, Jenifer Papararo.