Abstract

Subject to Change: Writings and Interviews brings together catalogue statements, essays, conversations, lecture notes, communications with gallerists and writers, and unpublished writings by Liz Magor, of the most important contemporary artists of the last fifty years. In addition to writings spanning more than four decades, the book features a preface by Magor, as well as an introductory essay by critic and curator Philip Monk.

A sculptor who replicates quotidian objects, often combining them with found ephemera or complicating their shape or size, Liz Magor prompts viewers of her sculptures to endow them with stories and histories of their own making. As a writer, Magor uses narrative to make sense of her own work, but she also returns to themes over the course of her career including subject/object relations and transformations; training systems for artists; consumption and commodification; human attachment and relationships; and complexities of time, place, and situation, particularly her own as a feminist artist in a settler-colonial society. Subject to Change is essential reading for anyone interested in Magor's practice, as well as broader questions in art since the 1970s.

Liz Magor is a sculptor who lives and works in Vancouver. She is a recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2001), the Audain Prize (2009), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2014). Her work was the subject of a 2017 traveling exhibition at the Kunstverein (Hamburg), Migros Museum (Zurich), and MAMAC (Nice). Other recent solo exhibitions include Esker Foundation (Calgary, 2020); Carpenter Center and Renaissance Society (Cambridge, MA and Chicago, 2019); Le Crédac (Ivry-sur-Seine, 2016); Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal (2016); Art Gallery of Ontario (2015); and Peep-Hole (Milan, 2015). She participated in documenta 8 (1987) and the 41st Venice Biennale (1984). For a number of years Magor combined an artistic practice with a teaching one and she has been on the faculty of the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) and Emily Carr University. In 2019 she was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of the French Republic.