Terms and Conditions<i>,</i> Bookworks, MUMA

<p dir="ltr"><b>Research background</b><i> </i><i>Terms & Conditions</i> was presented during <i>Bookworks</i> at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), 24 July–21 September 2019. Curated by Warren Taylor, <i>Bookworks</i> gathered six "leading practitioners" to examine contemporary artists’ book publishing. Cruickshank’s project comprised a performative publishing studio in the gallery and the performance of a catalogue text delivered at a public MADA Artforum. Cruickshank invited extra-curatorial guest participants and they contributed materials and written responses (Xavier Antin, Terri Bird, Lizzie Boon, Alex Margetic, Ian Milliss, Spiros Panigirakis, Selena Repanis, Rachel Schenberg, and Francis Plagne). The project interrogated how institutional ephemera – guides, labels, wall texts, catalogues and other paratexts – frame and script the reception of artworks.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Research contribution</b><i> </i><i>Terms & Conditions</i> staged publishing as method. By relocating the production of cataloguing, explanatory and distributive texts into the gallery as live, repeatable procedures, the project exposed and re‑tooled the contractual relations between artworks and their institutional paratexts. The evolving studio articulated a tactic of “making public the making public”: reading, writing and redistribution were treated as the primary, and public, artistic operations. The project thereby advanced a practice‑led account of paratext as central form, rather than as supplement, and tested how institutional discourse might be re-authored in situ.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Research significance</b> Realised in a museum context alongside internationally recognised peers (Olaf Nikolai, Will Holder, Batia Suter, et al), the project embedded a live publishing practice inside a curated survey of the field. The exhibition included an independent Art Library of around 800 titles from about 100 publishers, and a public talk series featuring Cruickshank's performance lecture. Mainstream press coverage in <i>The Age</i> (Ray Edgar, 19 July 2019) profiled the project – describing Cruickshank as “a key figure in Australia” and noting his VMS installation – evidencing reach beyond sector media.</p>