Perimeter Editions x Mark Hilton

Mark Hilton - Half Flush Book Launch & Signing

Saturday November 28, 3pm-5pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood

Perimeter is thrilled to announce the Melbourne launch of Mark Hilton's newest title Half Flush, published by Perimeter Editions.

Each drawing in New York-based Australian artist Mark Hilton’s new artist's book Half Flush adopts a duality that can't help but to stir something in the viewer. Using the standard pack of cards as his organising principle, Hilton mixes desire, degradation, contamination, zealotry and violence into a brew often sweetened by humour. Each suit has a theme that works more as a starting point than a defining rule: diamonds are class; hearts are religion; spades are nationalism; clubs are the environment. Using graphite pencil on white paper, Hilton employs a range of styles, from highly intricate realism to cartoons and simple line sketches. In the spirit of playing card design, all his drawings have a direct, emblematic quality, not unlike the illustrations in old books and magazines.

In addition to this, Hilton uses the two-way design of the playing card as the basis for the series’ double-meanings and double-readings, although unlike conventional cards, most of his do not contain perfect mirror images. The ten of clubs, for instance, shows an overweight person on a scale. From one vantage, we read his or her weight; from the other, we make out the word “obese”. The design on the back of the cards is also irregular – while it shares the intricate patterning common to many packs, it seems to depict a bell-shape entering a flowery hole (and there’s no prize for guessing what that alludes to). The book features an essay by John Thomson, co-director of Foxy Production, New York.

LAUNCH
Saturday November 28, 3pm-5pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood