Mike Kelley | The Uncanny

Mike Kelley

The Uncanny

Arnhem, The Netherlands: Sonsbeek, 1993

152 pp., 24 x 17 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

An influential catalogue published in conjunction with Mike Kelley’s landmark exhibition of the same name, at the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, as part of Sonsbeek 93. 

"Mike Kelley's contribution to Sonsbeek '93, 'The Uncanny' - an exhibition within an exhibition - has since attained almost mythical status. Many know it only through the book, which sold out long ago, so its return in updated form 11 years on, in Liverpool rather than Arnheim, is itself a little uncanny. 

The book's essay, 'Playing with Dead Things', accompanied by a long and extraordinary photo-essay, is the artist's most ambitious to date. Like the best writings of Dan Graham and Robert Smithson, it is a remarkable piece of cultural synthesis that makes most academic writing on art seem pale, confined and reiterative. Without the essay the exhibition is just half the story.”

- Alex Farquharson