No Fusion – Stephen Hobbs Monograph

Description

During most of 2015/2016, artist Stephen Hobbs did a series of lecture tours in the US. Soon after, he began collaborating with the David Krut Workshop on a series of letterpress prints. These were informed by his residencies at Salt & Cedar in Detroit’s Eastern Market and at the Centre for Contemporary Printmaking in New Haven, Connecticut.

From this has flowed No Fusion, an exhibition that opened at David Krut Projects in Parkwood, Johannesburg, on May 5, 2017. The exhibition of letterpress prints, monotypes and sculpture captured Hobbs’s fascination with optical interplay and visual disruption. And from the exhibition comes this Monograph. A unique picture-flip book, combining picture fragments and words in an interplay of randomised ideas.

Since 1994, Johannesburg has served as a reference point for Hobbs’ artistic and curatorial insights into the apartheid city turned African city – with a particular interest in the impact of defensive urban planning and architecture on the behavioral aspects of city and society. The resultant urban decay that develops in such conditions evolved Hobbs practice into consultative processes on the role of art in public space relative to urban design frameworks commissioned by the city. More recently through his exhibition work with David Krut Projects, Hobbs’ urban defensive knowledge has broadened to research and production inspired by the spatial planning of WWI and WWII military installations on the continent of Africa and abroad.

Stephen Hobbs graduated from Wits University with a BAFA (Hons.) in 1994. He was the curator of the Market Theatre Galleries (Johannesburg) from 1994 to 2000, Co-Director of the purpose built Gallery Premises (2004-2008) at the Joburg Theatre. Since 2001 he has co-directed the artist collaborative and public art consultancy – The Trinity Session. And since 2004 has co-produced a range of multi-medium urban and network-focused projects, with Marcus Neustetter, under the collaborative name Hobbs/Neustetter.