Kevin Malcolm / Outremer (2017)

This book by Kevin Malcolm is co-published by Varv Varv and Woodpecker Projects and presents works from an ongoing artistic research project initiated in 2014. Its starting point is the Musée Guimet in Paris and the collection of Asian art amassed by industrialist and traveller Émile Étienne Guimet whose fortune was made in the production of a synthetic ultramarine pigment essential as a whitening agent. This project asks questions of European identity and the role of the artist as collector and exhibitor of images and objects.

Entitled Outremer, the book explores Malcolm’s personal archive relating to the project alongside specially commissioned texts by Henning Lundkvist and Simen Joachim Helsvig. Driven by an interest in how images, texts and objects communicate, Malcolm is concerned with unearthing subliminal layers of meaning. Through strategies of alteration, combination and repositioning, the work aims to highlight residual histories and power dynamics, enabling reflection on knowledge production and representation.

Images: From the book Outremer by Kevin Malcolm

Design by VARV VARV

Text by Simen Joachim Helsvig, Bernard Lavilliers and Henning Lundkvist

Translation by Valérie Collart

ISBN: 978-91-983587-1-1