The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: Appropiation En Abyme - 1971 2001 - Tapa blanda

The strategy of postmodern appropriation that burgeoned into an international style in the 1980s is currently epitomised by the work of New York artists such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Hans Haacke and David Salle. This book examines the parallel yet highly original evolution of Australia's leading appropriationist, Imants Tillers.
The author argues that whereas the New York school was predominantly based on the appropriation of mass media imagery, from 1975 onwards Tiller turned to the appropriation of fine art imagery. While the New York school was primarily oriented towards a deconstruction of the ideological signs of mass media, Tillers pioneered an alternative Australian school of appropriation based on the deconstruction of authorship.
Coulter-Smith also argues that the lack of authorial presence that arises out of Tillers' approach foregrounds the role of the viewer in the construction of meaning and in so doing expands the discourse of appropriation into the multi-dimensional space of intertextuality.

Graham Coulter-Smith is Writer-Theorist in Residence at the Fine Art Research Centre, Southampton Institute.