Publisher: Perimeter 2018 ISBN: 9780648262800 Format: Softcover 208 pp, 240x170mm
Floodplain, the new book by Melbourne-based artist James Geurts, not only traces the photographic history of Melbourne's iconic Yarra river – its floods, infrastructure and geographical significance – but expands on the cultural and environmental implications of our acts of intervention. Published to coincide with Geurts' exhibition of the same title at the National Gallery of Victoria, Floodplain forms a wider treatise about the mythology of the flood and the fallacies of environmental colonialism.
Employing extensive field research and various conceptual and geographic methodologies, James Geurts produces site and time-specific projects including the ongoing Embassy for Water in 2011, which helped win the bid for the 2018 European Capital for Culture in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
Geurts has exhibited his projects in galleries including White Cube, London; GEMAK, Den Haag Netherlands; Centre for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Israel; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; La Chambre Blanche, Quebec; and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.