John Gossage (b. 1946) was born in Staten Island, New York. Firstly, he is an artist who has, become noted for his intellectually engaging, subversive and well-crafted artist books. As well as other publications. In them the artist utilizes under-recognized elements of the urban environment. Including: unused and abandoned patches of land; refuse and detritus; barbed wire; graffiti. Allowing him to explore themes as disparate as surveillance, memory and the relationship between architecture and power.
“Gossage is always about the luxuriance of what goes unnoticed, what goes unseen until his pictures call your attention to it,” wrote Gus Blaisdell in The Romance Industry. Gossage photographs that which has just occurred, from markings on a wall to a table after a meal, to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us to look at what we have misplaced or abandoned he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history.
