OUR STORE IS CLOSED ON ANZAC DAY: THURSDAY 25 APRIL
Amelia Jones is the Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Research at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. She is the author of many books, including Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts and the coedited anthologies Perform Repeat Record: Live Art in History and Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories. Andy Campbell is assistant professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ and the forthcoming Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives and Contemporary Art.
'This charming and disarming homage to a unique figure provides a backbone to the kinds of invasive physical performance for which Ron Athey is best known. [...] It lives and breathes, creating a well-rounded sense both of a life's work to date and of the man himself. Fans of Athey's work, or certainly anyone with an interest in the kinds of experimental performance artists who came punctured and bleeding out of the early 90s will find a great deal of thoughtful, thought-provoking content here.' -- Keri O'Shea, Trebuchet Magazine 'A Bible-sized tumble through [Athey's] many nuances, chalking up his impact on Modern Primitive body art, HIV/AIDS activism, Los Angeles performance art, the '90s culture wars, death rock and post-punk music scenes, independent publishing, and gay pornography. [...] The 'Writing Athey' chapters are undoubtedly the crown jewel of this collection, as it occasions the artist's boundless humor and depth free rein on a number of topics. Athey's voice rings with alacrity. Its pithy, informed, and sometimes bitchy frankness is unpretentious and singular. [...] The personal revelation of this Communion is an important one. And it's the humanism that this collection so indelibly registers. [...] Queer Communion has a crush on a man who makes work out of all of the cultural cosmologies around him. It reads like a series of love affairs, a 439-page cruising diary through one of the most garrulous, affectionate, and deeply misunderstood practitioners working today. Queer Communion recalls that good old adage about the devil - like her, Miss Athey shimmers in the details.' -- Bradford Nordeen, Los Angeles Review of Books 'Queer Communion [is] full of longing, thick with affect, and dense with erudition... [It] attests to the fact that, for many, the work Athey stages with and through his body becomes bound to the complex and singular unfolding of their intimate lives.' -- Kimberly Lamm, Journal of Visual Culture
