Early Works
Ivars Gravlejs
MACK
Softcover
144 pages
200 x 270 mm
2015
ISBN 9781910164396
An eccentric scrapbook documenting Ivars Gravlejs schooldays in Latvia during the 1990s. Aged 11, Gravlejs acquired a camera, soon deployed in unrestrained rebellion against authority – the small state of the school. Gravlejs writes, “I often felt nauseous before going to school because of the humiliation that I faced from my teachers. The only way to survive school was to do something creative – to take pictures and make movies.”
Early Works satirises of the rules and aesthetic principles of the adult world. Eight sections trace the various phases of Gravlejs’s encyclopaedic curiosity, including ‘Conceptual’, ‘Pop art’ and ‘Actions’, parroting the tropes of contemporary art, in emanations of the readymade (a pop art stockpile of soda cans), fake historical reconstructions (toy soldiers in battle) and surreal compositions (the erotic union of eggs and a sausage).
About the Artist
Ivars Gravlejs (b. 1979) is a Latvian photographer who lives and works in Prague. He studied photography at the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague (2000–07). He currently teaches photography in Latvia and the Czech Republic.
About the Publisher
MACK is an independent art and photography publishing house based in London. Mack works with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions, releasing between 20-25 books per year. The publisher was founded in 2010 in London by Michael Mack.
