Martha Rosler in conversation with Steve Edwards

On Friday 11 July 2014, Martha Rosler will be at the Whitechapel Gallery, London for a conversation with Steve Edwards, author of our One Work book Martha Rosler: The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems.

In The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974—75), Rosler bridged the concerns of art with those of political documentary. The work, a series of twenty-one black-and-white photographs, twenty-four text panels and three blank panels, embraces the codes of the photo-text experiments of the period and applies them to the social reality of New York’s Lower East Side.

In the book Edwards contextualises The Bowery in relation to the work of the San Diego Group, examines the prevailing view of the work as a critique of documentary, studies its relation to Jean-Luc Godard and other examples of political modernism, and concludes with a speculative insertion of The Bowery within the pastoral tradition.

At the talk Rosler’s pivotal text and image work from the mid-1970s will be the starting point for a discussion about her varied and highly influential practice.

Martha Rosler in conversation with Steve Edwards
Friday 11 July, 19:00–21:00

Whitechapel Gallery
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London
E1 7QX

Tickets: £8.50 (Concessions £6.50).

To purchase tickets visit the Whitechapel Gallery website.

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems is part of the One Work series of books, each of which presents a single work of art considered in detail through a single text. To order the book, visit The MIT Press website or your nearest independent bookshop.