Read My Lips - Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman

Only 1000 copies of this very rare catalogue were published to coincide with the exhibition Read My Lips at the National Gallery of Australia from 6 June - 9 August 1998.  
 
Read My Lips showcased three important contemporary artists: Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman, whose work is at the centre of debates about the role and meaning of art today. Using formats familiar from advertising, film and elsewhere, the artists surprise the viewer with words and images that are new or strikingly out of context. The exhibition, curated by Kathryn Weir, juxtaposes three visually arresting bodies of work including prints, photographs and multiples from the late 1970s to the present and explores some of today's key aesthetic questions.
 
Holzer, Kruger and Sherman use the techniques of mass communication and advertising to explore gender and identity. They use conventional formats in Cindy Sherman order to seize our attention, then deliver the unexpected. Jenny Holzer's LED signs and Barbara Kruger's billboards look as though they might be selling life insurance, lipstick or the latest model car. Cindy Sherman plucks images from our collective unconscious and dares us to look again at the narratives we create to understand them. Seduced by recognisable conventions of form, the viewer is then asked to reconsider his or her expectations. The works in Read My Lips by Holzer, Kruger and Sherman make striking visual statements about the nature of art, representation and power in contemporary society.